Jurassic Park Series

“Crichton is remarkably realistic with his depictions of what it could be like if genetic engineering created a theme park full of carefully modified dinosaurs—and the terrible lizards got out of control.”

—USA Today

“Crichton’s notion is wonderful precisely because nothing about it is entirely outside the realm of possibility.… He presents an astonishingly plausible case that a lot of money and a little bit of luck are all one would need to make this book’s unlikely scenario become real.”

—The Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Intellectually provocative, high-octane entertainment.”

—New York Newsday

“AN EXCITING, FAST-PACED
TALE THAT’S HARD TO
PUT DOWN.”

—Milwaukee Journal

“Riveting … A winning blend of action, suspense, and information.”

—Detroit Free Press

“Exciting … Frightening.”

—The New York Times

“Ingenious … JURASSIC PARK is hard to beat for sheer intellectual entertainment.”

—Entertainment Weekly

“A winner … Highly entertaining … Michael Crichton has written a thriller combining sophisticated biotechnology with prehistoric legend. And what a thriller it is.”

—St. Petersburg Times

“[A] DEFT SCIENTIFIC
THRILLER … A SNAPPY
NIGHTMARE OF SCIENCE
RUN AMOK.

—The Wall Street Journal

“Crichton’s dinosaurs are genuinely frightening.”

—Chicago Sun-Times

“Crichton’s sci-fi is convincingly detailed.”

—Time Magazine

“Vastly entertaining … [A] tornado-paced tale … Easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire bestseller.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“A scary, creepy, mesmerizing techno-thriller with teeth.”

—Publishers Weekly

“By far the best science fiction I have read since Jules Verne in my youth.”

—John Barkham Review

Title Page

Publisher Details

A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group

1990 by Michael Crichton

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

www.ballantinebooks.com

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 90-52960

eISBN: 978-0-307-76305-1

The edition published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

v3.1_r5

Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Introduction
Prologue: The Bite of the Raptor
First Iteration
Almost Paradise
Puntarenas
The Beach
New York
The Shape of the Data
Second Iteration
The Shore of the Inland Sea
Skeleton
Cowan, Swain and Ross
Plans
Hammond
Choteau
Target of Opportunity
Airport
Malcolm
Isla Nublar
Welcome
Third Iteration
Jurassic Park
When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth
The Tour
Control
Version 4.4
Control
The Tour
Control
Big Rex
Control
Stegosaur
Control
Breeding Sites
Fourth Iteration
The Main Road
Return
Nedry
Bungalow
Tim
Lex
Control
The Road
Control
In the Park
Control
The Park
Dawn
The Park
Fifth Iteration
Search
Aviary
Tyrannosaur
Control
Sixth Iteration
Return
The Grid
Lodge
Control
Seventh Iteration
Destroying the World
Under Control
Almost Paradigm
Descent
Hammond
The Beach
Approaching Dark
Epilogue: San José
Acknowledgments
Books by Michael Crichton
About the Author

Dedication

For A-M
and
T

Epigraph

“Reptiles are abhorrent because of their cold body, pale color, cartilaginous skeleton, filthy skin, fierce aspect, calculating eye, offensive smell, harsh voice, squalid habitation, and terrible venom; wherefore their Creator has not exerted his powers to make many of them.”

LINNAEUS, 1797

“You cannot recall a new form of life.”

ERWIN CHARGAFF, 1972

Map

INTRODUCTION

“The InGen Incident”

The late twentieth century has witnessed a scientific gold rush of astonishing proportions: the headlong and furious haste to commercialize genetic engineering. This enterprise has proceeded so rapidly—with so little outside commentary—that its dimensions and implications are hardly understood at all.

Biotechnology promises the greatest revolution in human history. By the end of this decade, it will have outdistanced atomic power and computers in its effect on our everyday lives. In the words of one observer, “Biotechnology is going to transform every aspect of human life: our medical care, our food, our health, our entertainment, our very bodies. Nothing will ever be the same again. It’s literally going to change the face of the planet.”

But the biotechnology revolution differs in three important respects from past scientific transformations.

First, it is broad-based. America entered the atomic age through the work of a single research institution, at Los Alamos. It entered the computer age through the efforts of about a dozen companies. But biotechnology research is now carried out in more than two thousand laboratories in America alone. Five hundred corporations spend five billion dollars a year on this technology.

Second, much of the research is thoughtless or frivolous. Efforts to engineer paler trout for better visibility in the stream, square trees for easier lumbering, and injectable scent cells so you’ll always smell of your favorite perfume may seem like a joke, but they are not. Indeed, the fact that biotechnology can be applied to the industries traditionally subject to the vagaries of fashion, such as cosmetics and leisure activities, heightens concern about the whimsical use of this powerful new technology.

Third, the work is uncontrolled. No one supervises it. No federal laws regulate it. There is no coherent government policy, in America or anywhere else in the world. And because the products of biotechnology range from drugs to farm crops to artificial snow, an intelligent policy is difficult.

But most disturbing is the fact that no watchdogs are found among scientists themselves. It is remarkable that nearly every scientist in genetics research is also engaged in the commerce of biotechnology. There are no detached observers. Everybody has a stake.

The commercialization of molecular biology is the most stunning ethical event in the history of science, and it has happened with astonishing speed. For four hundred years since Galileo, science has always proceeded as a free and open inquiry into the workings of nature. Scientists have always ignored national boundaries, holding themselves above the transitory concerns of politics and even wars. Scientists have always rebelled against secrecy in research, and have even frowned on the idea of patenting their discoveries, seeing themselves as working to the benefit of all mankind. And for many generations, the discoveries of scientists did indeed have a peculiarly selfless quality.

When, in 1953, two young researchers in England, James Watson and Francis Crick, deciphered the structure of DNA, their work was hailed as a triumph of the human spirit, of the centuries-old quest to understand the universe in a scientific way. It was confidently expected that their discovery would be selflessly extended to the greater benefit of mankind.

Yet that did not happen. Thirty years later, nearly all of Watson and Crick’s scientific colleagues were engaged in another sort of enterprise entirely. Research in molecular genetics had become a vast, multibillion-dollar commercial undertaking, and its origins can be traced not to 1953 but to April 1976.

That was the date of a now famous meeting, in which Robert Swanson, a venture capitalist, approached Herbert Boyer, a biochemist at the University of California. The two men agreed to found a commercial company to exploit Boyer’s gene-splicing techniques. Their new company, Genentech, quickly became the largest and most successful of the genetic engineering start-ups.

Suddenly it seemed as if everyone wanted to become rich. New companies were announced almost weekly, and scientists flocked to exploit genetic research. By 1986, at least 362 scientists, including 64 in the National Academy, sat on the advisory boards of biotech firms. The number of those who held equity positions or consultancies was several times greater.

It is necessary to emphasize how significant this shift in attitude actually was. In the past, pure scientists took a snobbish view of business. They saw the pursuit of money as intellectually uninteresting, suited only to shopkeepers. And to do research for industry, even at the prestigious Bell or IBM labs, was only for those who couldn’t get a university appointment. Thus the attitude of pure scientists was fundamentally critical toward the work of applied scientists, and to industry in general. Their long-standing antagonism kept university scientists free of contaminating industry ties, and whenever debate arose about technological matters, disinterested scientists were available to discuss the issues at the highest levels.

But that is no longer true. There are very few molecular biologists and very few research institutions without commercial affiliations. The old days are gone. Genetic research continues, at a more furious pace than ever. But it is done in secret, and in haste, and for profit.

In this commercial climate, it is probably inevitable that a company as ambitious as International Genetic Technologies, Inc., of Palo Alto, would arise. It is equally unsurprising that the genetic crisis it created should go unreported. After all, InGen’s research was conducted in secret; the actual incident occurred in the most remote region of Central America; and fewer than twenty people were there to witness it. Of those, only a handful survived.

Even at the end, when International Genetic Technologies filed for Chapter 11 protection in United States Bankruptcy Court in San Francisco on October 5, 1989, the proceedings drew little press attention. It appeared so ordinary: InGen was the third small American bioengineering company to fail that year, and the seventh since 1986. Few court documents were made public, since the creditors were Japanese investment consortia, such as Hamaguri and Densaka, companies which traditionally shun publicity. To avoid unnecessary disclosure, Daniel Ross, of Cowan, Swain and Ross, counsel for InGen, also represented the Japanese investors. And the rather unusual petition of the vice consul of Costa Rica was heard behind closed doors. Thus it is not surprising that, within a month, the problems of InGen were quietly and amicably settled.

Parties to that settlement, including the distinguished scientific board of advisers, signed a nondisclosure agreement, and none will speak about what happened; but many of the principal figures in the “InGen incident” are not signatories, and were willing to discuss the remarkable events leading up to those final two days in August 1989 on a remote island off the west coast of Costa Rica.

PROLOGUE: THE BITE OF THE RAPTOR

The tropical rain fell in drenching sheets, hammering the corrugated roof of the clinic building, roaring down the metal gutters, splashing on the ground in a torrent. Roberta Carter sighed, and stared out the window. From the clinic, she could hardly see the beach or the ocean beyond, cloaked in low fog. This wasn’t what she had expected when she had come to the fishing village of Bahía Anasco, on the west coast of Costa Rica, to spend two months as a visiting physician. Bobbie Carter had expected sun and relaxation, after two grueling years of residency in emergency medicine at Michael Reese in Chicago.

She had been in Bahía Anasco now for three weeks. And it had rained every day.

Everything else was fine. She liked the isolation of Bahía Anasco, and the friendliness of its people. Costa Rica had one of the twenty best medical systems in the world, and even in this remote coastal village, the clinic was well maintained, amply supplied. Her paramedic, Manuel Aragón, was intelligent and well trained. Bobbie was able to practice a level of medicine equal to what she had practiced in Chicago.

But the rain! The constant, unending rain!

Across the examining room, Manuel cocked his head. “Listen,” he said.

“Believe me, I hear it,” Bobbie said.

“No. Listen.”

And then she caught it, another sound blended with the rain, a deeper rumble that built and emerged until it was clear: the rhythmic thumping of a helicopter. She thought, They can’t be flying in weather like this.

But the sound built steadily, and then the helicopter burst low through the ocean fog and roared overhead, circled, and came back. She saw the helicopter swing back over the water, near the fishing boats, then ease sideways to the rickety wooden dock, and back toward the beach.

It was looking for a place to land.

It was a big-bellied Sikorsky with a blue stripe on the side, with the words “InGen Construction.” That was the name of the construction company building a new resort on one of the offshore islands. The resort was said to be spectacular, and very complicated; many of the local people were employed in the construction, which had been going on for more than two years. Bobbie could imagine it—one of those huge American resorts with swimming pools and tennis courts, where guests could play and drink their daiquiris, without having any contact with the real life of the country.

Bobbie wondered what was so urgent on that island that the helicopter would fly in this weather. Through the windshield she saw the pilot exhale in relief as the helicopter settled onto the wet sand of the beach. Uniformed men jumped out, and flung open the big side door. She heard frantic shouts in Spanish, and Manuel nudged her.

They were calling for a doctor.

Two black crewmen carried a limp body toward her, while a white man barked orders. The white man had a yellow slicker. Red hair appeared around the edges of his Mets baseball cap. “Is there a doctor here?” he called to her, as she ran up.

“I’m Dr. Carter,” she said. The rain fell in heavy drops, pounding her head and shoulders. The red-haired man frowned at her. She was wearing cut-off jeans and a tank top. She had a stethoscope over her shoulder, the bell already rusted from the salt air.

“Ed Regis. We’ve got a very sick man here, doctor.”

“Then you better take him to San José,” she said. San José was the capital, just twenty minutes away by air.

“We would, but we can’t get over the mountains in this weather. You have to treat him here.”

Bobbie trotted alongside the injured man as they carried him to the clinic. He was a kid, no older than eighteen. Lifting away the blood-soaked shirt, she saw a big slashing rip along his shoulder, and another on the leg.

“What happened to him?”

“Construction accident,” Ed shouted. “He fell. One of the backhoes ran over him.”

The kid was pale, shivering, unconscious.

Manuel stood by the bright green door of the clinic, waving his arm. The men brought the body through and set it on the table in the center of the room. Manuel started an intravenous line, and Bobbie swung the light over the kid and bent to examine the wounds. Immediately she could see that it did not look good. The kid would almost certainly die.

A big tearing laceration ran from his shoulder down his torso. At the edge of the wound, the flesh was shredded. At the center, the shoulder was dislocated, pale bones exposed. A second slash cut through the heavy muscles of the thigh, deep enough to reveal the pulse of the femoral artery below. Her first impression was that his leg had been ripped open.

“Tell me again about this injury,” she said.

“I didn’t see it,” Ed said. “They say the backhoe dragged him.”

“Because it almost looks as if he was mauled,” Bobbie Carter said, probing the wound. Like most emergency room physicians, she could remember in detail patients she had seen even years before. She had seen two maulings. One was a two-year-old child who had been attacked by a rottweiler dog. The other was a drunken circus attendant who had had an encounter with a Bengal tiger. Both injuries were similar. There was a characteristic look to an animal attack.

“Mauled?” Ed said. “No, no. It was a backhoe, believe me.” Ed licked his lips as he spoke. He was edgy, acting as if he had done something wrong. Bobbie wondered why. If they were using inexperienced local workmen on the resort construction, they must have accidents all the time.

Manuel said, “Do you want lavage?”

“Yes,” she said. “After you block him.”

She bent lower, probed the wound with her fingertips. If an earth mover had rolled over him, dirt would be forced deep into the wound. But there wasn’t any dirt, just a slippery, slimy foam. And the wound had a strange odor, a kind of rotten stench, a smell of death and decay. She had never smelled anything like it before.

“How long ago did this happen?”

“An hour.”

Again she noticed how tense Ed Regis was. He was one of those eager, nervous types. And he didn’t look like a construction foreman. More like an executive. He was obviously out of his depth.

Bobbie Carter turned back to the injuries. Somehow she didn’t think she was seeing mechanical trauma. It just didn’t look right. No soil contamination of the wound site, and no crush-injury component. Mechanical trauma of any sort—an auto injury, a factory accident—almost always had some component of crushing. But here there was none. Instead, the man’s skin was shredded—ripped—across his shoulder, and again across his thigh.

It really did look like a maul. On the other hand, most of the body was unmarked, which was unusual for an animal attack. She looked again at the head, the arms, the hands—

The hands.

She felt a chill when she looked at the kid’s hands. There were short slashing cuts on both palms, and bruises on the wrists and forearms. She had worked in Chicago long enough to know what that meant.

“All right,” she said. “Wait outside.”

“Why?” Ed said, alarmed. He didn’t like that.

“Do you want me to help him, or not?” she said, and pushed him out the door and closed it on his face. She didn’t know what was going on, but she didn’t like it. Manuel hesitated. “I continue to wash?”

“Yes,” she said. She reached for her little Olympus point-and-shoot. She took several snapshots of the injury, shifting her light for a better view. It really did look like bites, she thought. Then the kid groaned, and she put her camera aside and bent toward him. His lips moved, his tongue thick.

“Raptor,” he said. “Lo sa raptor…”

At those words, Manuel froze, stepped back in horror.

“What does it mean?” Bobbie said.

Manuel shook his head. “I do not know, doctor. ‘Lo sa raptor’—no es español.”

“No?” It sounded to her like Spanish. “Then please continue to wash him.”

“No, doctor.” He wrinkled his nose. “Bad smell.” And he crossed himself.

Bobbie looked again at the slippery foam streaked across the wound. She touched it, rubbing it between her fingers. It seemed almost like saliva.…

The injured boy’s lips moved. “Raptor,” he whispered.

In a tone of horror, Manuel said, “It bit him.”

“What bit him?”

“Raptor.”

“What’s a raptor?”

“It means hupia.”

Bobbie frowned. The Costa Ricans were not especially superstitious, but she had heard the hupia mentioned in the village before. They were said to be night ghosts, faceless vampires who kidnapped small children. According to the belief, the hupia had once lived in the mountains of Costa Rica, but now inhabited the islands offshore.

Manuel was backing away, murmuring and crossing himself. “It is not normal, this smell,” he said. “It is the hupia.”

Bobbie was about to order him back to work when the injured youth opened his eyes and sat straight up on the table. Manuel shrieked in terror. The injured boy moaned and twisted his head, looking left and right with wide staring eyes, and then he explosively vomited blood. He went immediately into convulsions, his body vibrating, and Bobbie grabbed for him but he shuddered off the table onto the concrete floor. He vomited again. There was blood everywhere. Ed opened the door, saying, “What the hell’s happening?” and when he saw the blood he turned away, his hand to his mouth. Bobbie was grabbing for a stick to put in the boy’s clenched jaws, but even as she did it she knew it was hopeless, and with a final spastic jerk he relaxed and lay still.

She bent to perform mouth-to-mouth, but Manuel grabbed her shoulder fiercely, pulling her back. “No,” he said. “The hupia will cross over.”

“Manuel, for God’s sake—”

“No.” He stared at her fiercely. “No. You do not understand these things.”

Bobbie looked at the body on the ground and realized that it didn’t matter; there was no possibility of resuscitating him. Manuel called for the men, who came back into the room and took the body away. Ed appeared, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, muttering, “I’m sure you did all you could,” and then she watched as the men took the body away, back to the helicopter, and it lifted thunderously up into the sky.

“It is better,” Manuel said.

Bobbie was thinking about the boy’s hands. They had been covered with cuts and bruises, in the characteristic pattern of defense wounds. She was quite sure he had not died in a construction accident; he had been attacked, and he had held up his hands against his attacker. “Where is this island they’ve come from?” she asked.

“In the ocean. Perhaps a hundred, hundred and twenty miles offshore.”

“Pretty far for a resort,” she said.

Manuel watched the helicopter. “I hope they never come back.”

Well, she thought, at least she had pictures. But when she turned back to the table, she saw that her camera was gone.

The rain finally stopped later that night. Alone in the bedroom behind the clinic, Bobbie thumbed through her tattered paperback Spanish dictionary. The boy had said “raptor,” and, despite Manuel’s protests, she suspected it was a Spanish word. Sure enough, she found it in her dictionary. It meant “ravisher” or “abductor.”

That gave her pause. The sense of the word was suspiciously close to the meaning of hupia. Of course she did not believe in the superstition. And no ghost had cut those hands. What had the boy been trying to tell her?

From the next room, she heard groans. One of the village women was in the first stage of labor, and Elena Morales, the local midwife, was attending her. Bobbie went into the clinic room and gestured to Elena to step outside for a moment.

“Elena …”

“Sí, doctor?”

“Do you know what is a raptor?”

Elena was gray-haired and sixty, a strong woman with a practical, no-nonsense air. In the night, beneath the stars, she frowned and said, “Raptor?”

“Yes. You know this word?”

“Sí.” Elena nodded. “It means … a person who comes in the night and takes away a child.”

“A kidnapper?”

“Yes.”

“A hupia?”

Her whole manner changed. “Do not say this word, doctor.”

“Why not?”

“Do not speak of hupia now,” Elena said firmly, nodding her head toward the groans of the laboring woman. “It is not wise to say this word now.”

“But does a raptor bite and cut his victims?”

“Bite and cut?” Elena said, puzzled. “No, doctor. Nothing like this. A raptor is a man who takes a new baby.” She seemed irritated by the conversation, impatient to end it. Elena started back toward the clinic. “I will call to you when she is ready, doctor. I think one hour more, perhaps two.”

Bobbie looked at the stars, and listened to the peaceful lapping of the surf at the shore. In the darkness she saw the shadows of the fishing boats anchored offshore. The whole scene was quiet, so normal, she felt foolish to be talking of vampires and kidnapped babies.

Bobbie went back to her room, remembering again that Manuel had insisted it was not a Spanish word. Out of curiosity, she looked in the little English dictionary, and to her surprise she found the word there, too:

raptor\n [deriv. of L. raptor plunderer, fr. raptus]: bird of prey.

FIRST ITERATION

“At the earliest drawings of the fractal curve, few clues to the underlying mathematical structure will be seen.”

IAN MALCOLM

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. “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. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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. 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.”

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. 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.

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. “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. 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.

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. 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.”

SECOND ITERATION

“With subsequent drawings of the fractal curve, sudden changes may appear.”

IAN MALCOLM

THE SHORE OF THE INLAND
SEA

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. “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.”

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.

“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. “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. 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. 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.

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. 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.

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, New York. 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. 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. 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. 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. “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.”

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. 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. “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. 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.”

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.”

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. 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. 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.”

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. “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.”

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. 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. 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. 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.”

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.

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 corners 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.

He was looking at the graceful, curving neck of an enormous creature, rising fifty feet into the air.

He was looking at a dinosaur.

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. “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.”

THIRD ITERATION

“Details emerge more clearly as the fractal curve is re-drawn.”

IAN MALCOLM

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.

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.

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. “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.”

WHEN DINOSAURS RULED
THE 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. 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. 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.

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.”

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. 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.

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. They passed a sign that read:

CLOSED AREA
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
BEYOND 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:

CAUTION
TERATOGENIC SUBSTANCES
PREGNANT WOMEN AVOID EXPOSURE
TO THIS AREA

DANGER
RADIOACTIVE ISOTOPES IN USE
CARCINOGENIC 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

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. 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. “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. 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.

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.

“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. 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. 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. 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.

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. 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.”

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. 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. 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. “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.

CONTROL

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

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

“For example,” Gennaro said.

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

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

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

“Where is the big rex right now?” Gennaro asked.

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

“And the little rex?”

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

“How accurate?”

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

“How often is this updated?”

“Every thirty seconds.”

“Pretty impressive,” Gennaro said. “How’s it done?”

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

“Does the computer ever make a mistake?”

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

“What’s that?”

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

“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. How would you show me that I’m wrong?”

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

“Yes, but—”

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

“These pictures are …”

“Current ID images. From within the last five minutes.”

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

“Yes. I can visually review all the animals whenever I want.”

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

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

“But if one did get out?” Gennaro said.

Arnold snorted, and stubbed out his cigarette.

“Just hypothetically,” Gennaro said. “Supposing it happened?”

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

Gennaro nodded: “And if one got off the island?”

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

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

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

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

“Then I guess,” Malcolm said, “your system works so well, you don’t have any problems.”

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

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

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

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

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

“You mean the rides?” Arnold said.

Grant looked up sharply: rides?

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

“Wait a minute,” Grant said. “You’re going to have rides? Like an amusement park?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes, that’s right,” Nedry said, not looking up from the keyboard.

“It’s a hell of a system,” Arnold said proudly.

“That’s right,” Nedry said absently. “Just one or two minor bugs to fix.”

“Now,” Arnold said, “I see the tour is starting, so unless you have other questions …”

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

Arnold was punching buttons. Another screen came up.

“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.

THE TOUR

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m afraid they have things to discuss,” Ed Regis said. “Technical things.”

“I’m interested in technical things,” Tim said. “I’d rather go with them.”

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

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

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

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

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

“I know quite well why I’m here,” Malcolm said.

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

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

“Oh Christ,” Gennaro said. “I have to be able to speak freely. I didn’t ask for these damned kids to come—”

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

“That’s Richard Kiley,” Ed Regis said. “We spared no expense.”

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

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

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

They all looked to the left.

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

“Where are they?” Lex said.

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

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

“In the trees?” Lex said. “Dinosaurs in the trees?”

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

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

“That’s an othnielia,” Tim said.

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

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

“Pretty boring,” Lex said. “They’re not doing anything.”

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

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

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

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

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

Some of the hypsilophodonts were chewing, the jaws working. One reached up and scratched its head, with a five-fingered 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.

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.

“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. 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. 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. 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.

BIG REX

“The mighty tyrannosaurs arose late in dinosaur history. Dinosaurs ruled the earth for a hundred and twenty million years, but there were tyrannosaurs for only the last fifteen million years of that period.”

The Land Cruisers had stopped at the rise of a hill. They overlooked a forested area sloping down to the edge of the lagoon. The sun was falling to the west, sinking into a misty horizon. The whole landscape of Jurassic Park was bathed in soft light, with lengthening shadows. The surface of the lagoon rippled in pink crescents. Farther south, they saw the graceful necks of the apatosaurs, standing at the water’s edge, their bodies mirrored in the moving surface. It was quiet, except for the soft drone of cicadas. As they stared out at that landscape, it was possible to believe that they had really been transported millions of years back in time to a vanished world.

“It works, doesn’t it?” they heard Ed Regis say, over the intercom. “I like to come here sometimes, in the evening. And just sit.”

Grant was unimpressed. “Where is T-rex?”

“Good question. You often see the little one down in the lagoon. The lagoon’s stocked, so we have fish in there. The little one has learned to catch the fish. Interesting how he does it. He doesn’t use his hands, but he ducks his whole head under the water. Like a bird.”

“The little one?”

“The little T-rex. He’s a juvenile, two years old, and about a third grown now. Stands eight feet high, weighs a ton and a half. The other one’s a full-grown tyrannosaur. But I don’t see him at the moment.”

“Maybe he’s down hunting the apatosaurs,” Grant said.

Regis laughed, his voice tinny over the radio. “He would if he could, believe me. Sometimes he stands by the lagoon and stares at those animals, and wiggles those little forearms of his in frustration. But the T-rex territory is completely enclosed with trenches and fences. They’re disguised from view, but believe me, he can’t go anywhere.”

“Then where is he?”

“Hiding,” Regis said. “He’s a little shy.”

“Shy?” Malcolm said. “Tyrannosaurus rex is shy?”

“Well, he conceals himself as a general rule. You almost never see him out in the open, especially in daylight.”

“Why is that?”

“We think it’s because he has sensitive skin and sunburns easily.”

Malcolm began to laugh.

Grant sighed. “You’re destroying a lot of illusions.”

“I don’t think you’ll be disappointed,” Regis said. “Just wait.”

They heard a soft bleating sound. In the center of a field, a small cage rose up into view, lifted on hydraulics from underground. The cage bars slid down, and the goat remained tethered in the center of the field, bleating plaintively.

“Any minute now,” Regis said again.

They stared out the window.

“Look at them,” Hammond said, watching the control room monitor. “Leaning out of the windows, so eager. They can’t wait to see it. They have come for the danger.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Muldoon said. He twirled the keys on his finger and watched the Land Cruisers tensely. This was the first time that visitors had toured Jurassic Park, and Muldoon shared Arnold’s apprehension.

Robert Muldoon was a big man, fifty years old, with a steel-gray mustache and deep blue eyes. Raised in Kenya, he had spent most of his life as a guide for African big-game hunters, as had his father before him. But since 1980, he had worked principally for conservation groups and zoo designers as a wildlife consultant. He had become well known; an article in the London Sunday Times had said, “What Robert Trent Jones is to golf courses, Robert Muldoon is to zoos: a designer of unsurpassed knowledge and skill.”

In 1986, he had done some work for a San Francisco company that was building a private wildlife park on an island in North America. Muldoon had laid out the boundaries for different animals, defining space and habitat requirements for lions, elephants, zebras, and hippos. Identifying which animals could be kept together, and which had to be separated. At the time, it had been a fairly routine job. He had been more interested in an Indian park called Tiger World in southern Kashmir.

Then, a year ago, he was offered a job as game warden of Jurassic Park. It coincided with a desire to leave Africa; the salary was excellent; Muldoon had taken it on for a year. He was astonished to discover the park was really a collection of genetically engineered prehistoric animals.

It was of course interesting work, but during his years in Africa, Muldoon had developed an unblinking view of animals—an unromantic view—that frequently set him at odds with the Jurassic Park management in California, particularly the little martinet standing beside him in the control room. In Muldoon’s opinion, cloning dinosaurs in a laboratory was one thing. Maintaining them in the wild was quite another.

It was Muldoon’s view that some dinosaurs were too dangerous to be kept in a park setting. In part, the danger existed because they still knew so little about the animals. For example, nobody even suspected the dilophosaurs were poisonous until they were observed hunting indigenous rats on the island—biting the rodents and then stepping back, to wait for them to die. And even then nobody suspected the dilophosaurs could spit until one of the handlers was almost blinded by spitting venom.

After that, Hammond had agreed to study dilophosaur venom, which was found to contain seven different toxic enzymes. It was also discovered that the dilophosaurs could spit a distance of fifty feet. Since this raised the possibility that a guest in a car might be blinded, management decided to remove the poison sacs. The vets had tried twice, on two different animals, without success. No one knew where the poison was being secreted. And no one would ever know until an autopsy was performed on a dilophosaur—and management would not allow one to be killed.

Muldoon worried even more about the velociraptors. They were instinctive hunters, and they never passed up prey. They killed even when they weren’t hungry. They killed for the pleasure of killing. They were swift: strong runners and astonishing jumpers. They had lethal claws on all four limbs; one swipe of a forearm would disembowel a man, spilling his guts out. And they had powerful tearing jaws that ripped flesh instead of biting it. They were far more intelligent than the other dinosaurs, and they seemed to be natural cage-breakers.

Every zoo expert knew that certain animals were especially likely to get free of their cages. Some, like monkeys and elephants, could undo cage doors. Others, like wild pigs, were unusually intelligent and could lift gate fasteners with their snouts. But who would suspect that the giant armadillo was a notorious cage-breaker? Or the moose? Yet a moose was almost as skillful with its snout as an elephant with its trunk. Moose were always getting free; they had a talent for it.

And so did velociraptors.

Raptors were at least as intelligent as chimpanzees. And, like chimpanzees, they had agile hands that enabled them to open doors and manipulate objects. They could escape with ease. And when, as Muldoon had feared, one of them finally escaped, it killed two construction workers and maimed a third before being recaptured. After that episode, the visitor lodge had been reworked with heavy barred gates, a high perimeter fence, and tempered-glass windows. And the raptor holding pen was rebuilt with electronic sensors to warn of another impending escape.

Muldoon wanted guns as well. And he wanted shoulder-mounted LAW-missile launchers. Hunters knew how difficult it was to bring down a four-ton African elephant—and some of the dinosaurs weighed ten times as much. Management was horrified, insisting there be no guns anywhere on the island. When Muldoon threatened to quit, and to take his story to the press, a compromise was reached. In the end, two specially built laser-guided missile launchers were kept in a locked room in the basement. Only Muldoon had keys to the room.

Those were the keys Muldoon was twirling now.

“I’m going downstairs,” he said.

Arnold, watching the control screens, nodded. The two Land Cruisers sat at the top of the hill, waiting for the T-rex to appear.

“Hey,” Dennis Nedry called, from the far console. “As long as you’re up, get me a Coke, okay?”

Grant waited in the car, watching quietly. The bleating of the goat became louder, more insistent. The goat tugged frantically at its tether, racing back and forth. Over the radio, Grant heard Lex say in alarm, “What’s going to happen to the goat? Is she going to eat the goat?”

“I think so,” someone said to her, and then Ellie turned the radio down. Then they smelled the odor, a garbage stench of putrefaction and decay that drifted up the hillside toward them.

Grant whispered, “He’s here.”

“She,” Malcolm said.

The goat was tethered in the center of the field, thirty yards from the nearest trees. The dinosaur must be somewhere among the trees, but for a moment Grant could see nothing at all. Then he realized he was looking too low: the animal’s head stood twenty feet above the ground, half concealed among the upper branches of the palm trees.

Malcolm whispered, “Oh, my God.… She’s as large as a bloody building.…”

Grant stared at the enormous square head, five feet long, mottled reddish brown, with huge jaws and fangs. The tyrannosaur’s jaws worked once, opening and closing. But the huge animal did not emerge from hiding.

Malcolm whispered: “How long will it wait?”

“Maybe three or four minutes. Maybe—”

The tyrannosaur sprang silently forward, fully revealing her enormous body. In four bounding steps she covered the distance to the goat, bent down, and bit it through the neck. The bleating stopped. There was silence.

Poised over her kill, the tyrannosaur became suddenly hesitant. Her massive head turned on the muscular neck, looking in all directions. She stared fixedly at the Land Cruiser, high above on the hill.

Malcolm whispered, “Can she see us?”

“Oh yes,” Regis said, on the intercom. “Let’s see if she’s going to eat here in front of us, or if she’s going to drag the prey away.”

The tyrannosaur bent down, and sniffed the carcass of the goat. A bird chirped: her head snapped up, alert, watchful. She looked back and forth, scanning in small jerking shifts.

“Like a bird,” Ellie said.

Still the tyrannosaur hesitated. “What is she afraid of?” Malcolm whispered.

“Probably another tyrannosaur,” Grant whispered. Big carnivores like lions and tigers often became cautious after a kill, behaving as if suddenly exposed. Nineteenth-century zoologists imagined the animals felt guilty for what they had done. But contemporary scientists documented the effort behind a kill—hours of patient stalking before the final lunge—as well as the frequency of failure. The idea of “nature, red in tooth and claw” was wrong; most often the prey got away. When a carnivore finally brought down an animal, it was watchful for another predator, who might attack it and steal its prize. Thus this tyrannosaur was probably fearful of another tyrannosaur.

The huge animal bent over the goat again. One great hind limb held the carcass in place as the jaws began to tear the flesh.

“She’s going to stay,” Regis whispered. “Excellent.”

The tyrannosaur lifted her head again, ragged chunks of bleeding flesh in her jaws. She stared at the Land Cruiser. She began to chew. They heard the sickening crunch of bones.

“Ewww,” Lex said, over the intercom. “That’s disgusting.”

And then, as if caution had finally gotten the better of her, the tyrannosaur lifted the remains of the goat in her jaws and carried them silently back among the trees.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Tyrannosaurus rex,” the tape said. The Land Cruisers started up, and moved silently off, through the foliage.

Malcolm sat back in his seat. “Fantastic,” he said.

Gennaro wiped his forehead. He looked pale.

CONTROL

Henry Wu came into the control room to find everyone sitting in the dark, listening to the voices on the radio.

“—Jesus, if an animal like that gets out,” Gennaro was saying, his voice tinny on the speaker, “there’d be no stopping it.”

“No stopping it, no …”

“Huge, with no natural enemies …”

“My God, think of it …”

In the control room, Hammond said, “Damn those people. They are so negative.”

Wu said, “They’re still going on about an animal escaping? I don’t understand. They must have seen by now that we have everything under control. We’ve engineered the animals and engineered the resort.…” He shrugged.

It was Wu’s deepest perception that the park was fundamentally sound, as he believed his paleo-DNA was fundamentally sound. Whatever problems might arise in the DNA were essentially point-problems in the code, causing a specific problem in the phenotype: an enzyme that didn’t switch on, or a protein that didn’t fold. Whatever the difficulty, it was always solved with a relatively minor adjustment in the next version.

Similarly, he knew that Jurassic Park’s problems were not fundamental problems. They were not control problems. Nothing as basic, or as serious, as the possibility of an animal escaping. Wu found it offensive to think that anyone would believe him capable of contributing to a system where such a thing could happen.

“It’s that Malcolm,” Hammond said darkly. “He’s behind it all. He was against us from the start, you know. He’s got his theory that complex systems can’t be controlled and nature can’t be imitated. I don’t know what his problem is. Hell, we’re just making a zoo here. World’s full of ’em, and they all work fine. But he’s going to prove his theory or die trying. I just hope he doesn’t panic Gennaro into trying to shut the park down.”

Wu said, “Can he do that?”

“No,” Hammond said. “But he can try. He can try and frighten the Japanese investors, and get them to withdraw funds. Or he can make a stink with the San José government. He can make trouble.”

Arnold stubbed out his cigarette. “Let’s wait and see what happens,” he said. “We believe in the park. Let’s see how it plays out.”

Muldoon got off the elevator, nodded to the ground-floor guard, and went downstairs to the basement. He flicked on the lights. The basement was filled with two dozen Land Cruisers, arranged in neat rows. These were the electric cars that would eventually form an endless loop, touring the park, returning to the visitor center.

In the corner was a Jeep with a red stripe, one of two gasoline-powered vehicles—Harding, the vet, had taken the other that morning—which could go anywhere in the park, even among the animals. The Jeeps were painted with a diagonal red stripe because for some reason it discouraged the triceratops from charging the car.

Muldoon moved past the Jeep, toward the back. The steel door to the armaments room was unmarked. He unlocked it with his key, and swung the heavy door wide. Gun racks lined the interior. He pulled out a Randler Shoulder Launcher and a case of canisters. He tucked two gray rockets under his other arm.

After locking the door behind him, he put the gun into the back seat of the Jeep. As he left the garage, he heard the distant rumble of thunder.

“Looks like rain,” Ed Regis said, glancing up at the sky.

The Land Cruisers had stopped again, near the sauropod swamp. A large herd of apatosaurs was grazing at the edge of the lagoon, eating the leaves of the upper branches of the palm trees. In the same area were several duckbilled hadrosaurs, which in comparison looked much smaller.

Of course, Tim knew the hadrosaurs weren’t really small. It was only that the apatosaurs were so much larger. Their tiny heads reached fifty feet into the air, extending out on their long necks.

“The big animals you see are commonly called Brontosaurus,” the recording said, “but they are actually Apatosaurus. They weigh more than thirty tons. That means a single animal is as big as a whole herd of modern elephants. And you may notice that their preferred area, alongside the lagoon, is not swampy. Despite what the books say, brontosaurs avoid swamps. They prefer dry land.”

“Brontosaurus is the biggest dinosaur, Lex,” Ed Regis said. Tim didn’t bother to contradict him. Actually, Brachiosaurus was three times as large. And some people thought Ultrasaurus and Seismosaurus were even larger than Brachiosaurus. Seismosaurus might have weighed a hundred tons!

Alongside the apatosaurs, the smaller hadrosaurs stood on their hind legs to get at foliage. They moved gracefully for such large creatures. Several infant hadrosaurs scampered around the adults, eating the leaves that dropped from the mouths of the larger animals.

“The dinosaurs of Jurassic Park don’t breed,” the recording said. “The young animals you see were introduced a few months ago, already hatched. But the adults nurture them anyway.”

There was the rolling growl of thunder. The sky was darker, lower, and menacing.

“Yeah, looks like rain, all right,” Ed Regis said.

The car started forward, and Tim looked back at the hadrosaurs. Suddenly, off to one side, he saw a pale yellow animal moving quickly. There were brownish stripes on its back. He recognized it instantly. “Hey!” he shouted. “Stop the car!”

“What is it?” Ed Regis said.

“Quick! Stop the car!”

“We move on now to see the last of our great prehistoric animals, the stegosaurs,” the recorded voice said.

“What’s the matter, Tim?’ ”

“I saw one! I saw one in the field out there!”

“Saw what?”

“A raptor! In that field!”

“The stegosaurs are a mid-Jurassic animal, evolving about a hundred and seventy million years ago,” the recording said. “Several of these remarkable herbivores live here at Jurassic Park.”

“Oh, I don’t think so, Tim,” Ed Regis said. “Not a raptor.”

“I did! Stop the car!”

There was a babble on the intercom, as the news was relayed to Grant and Malcolm. “Tim says he saw a raptor.”

“Where?”

“Back at the field.”

“Let’s go back and look.”

“We can’t go back,” Ed Regis said. “We can only go forward. The cars are programmed.”

“We can’t go back?” Grant said.

“No,” Regis said. “Sorry. You see, it’s kind of a ride—”

“Tim, this is Professor Malcolm,” said a voice cutting in on the intercom. “I have just one question for you about this raptor. How old would you say it was?”

“Older than the baby we saw today,” Tim said. “And younger than the big adults in the pen. The adults were six feet tall. This one was about half that size.”

“That’s fine,” Malcolm said.

“I only saw it for a second,” Tim said.

“I’m sure it wasn’t a raptor,” Ed Regis said. “It couldn’t possibly be a raptor. Must have been one of the othys. They’re always jumping their fences. We have a hell of a time with them.”

“I know I saw a raptor,” Tim said.

“I’m hungry,” Lex said. She was starting to whine.

In the control room, Arnold turned to Wu. “What do you think the kid saw?”

“I think it must have been an othy.”

Arnold nodded. “We have trouble tracking othys, because they spend so much time in the trees.” The othys were an exception to the usual minute-to-minute control they maintained over the animals. The computers were constantly losing and picking up the othys, as they went into the trees and then came down again.

“What burns me,” Hammond said, “is that we have made this wonderful park, this fantastic park, and our very first visitors are going through it like accountants, just looking for problems. They aren’t experiencing the wonder of it at all.”

“That’s their problem,” Arnold said. “We can’t make them experience wonder.” The intercom clicked, and Arnold heard a voice drawl, “Ah, John, this is the Anne B over at the dock. We haven’t finished offloading, but I’m looking at that storm pattern south of us. I’d rather not be tied up here if this chop gets any worse.”

Arnold turned to the monitor showing the cargo vessel, which was moored at the dock on the east side of the island. He pressed the radio button. “How much left to do, Jim?”

“Just the three final equipment containers. I haven’t checked the manifest, but I assume you can wait another two weeks for it. We’re not well berthed here, you know, and we are one hundred miles offshore.”

“You requesting permission to leave?”

“Yes, John.”

“I want that equipment,” Hammond said. “That’s equipment for the labs. We need it.”

“Yes,” Arnold said. “But you didn’t want to put money into a storm barrier to protect the pier. So we don’t have a good harbor. If the storm gets worse, the ship will be pounded against the dock. I’ve seen ships lost that way. Then you’ve got all the other expenses, replacement of the vessel plus salvage to clear your dock … and you can’t use your dock until you do.…”

Hammond gave a dismissing wave. “Get them out of there.”

“Permission to leave, Anne B,” Arnold said, into the radio.

“See you in two weeks,” the voice said.

On the video monitor, they saw the crew on the decks, casting off the lines. Arnold turned back to the main console bank. He saw the Land Cruisers moving through fields of steam.

“Where are they now?” Hammond said.

“It looks like the south fields,” Arnold said. The southern end of the island had more volcanic activity than the north. “That means they should be almost to the stegos. I’m sure they’ll stop and see what Harding is doing.”

STEGOSAUR

As the Land Cruiser came to a stop, Ellie Sattler stared through the plumes of steam at the stegosaurus. It was standing quietly, not moving. A Jeep with a red stripe was parked alongside it.

“I have to admit, that’s a funny-looking animal,” Malcolm said.

The stegosaurus was twenty feet long, with a huge bulky body and vertical armor plates along its back. The tail had dangerous-looking three-foot spikes. But the neck tapered to an absurdly small head with a stupid gaze, like a very dumb horse.

As they watched, a man walked around from behind the animal. “That’s our vet, Dr. Harding,” Regis said, over the radio. “He’s anesthetized the stego, which is why it’s not moving. It’s sick.”

Grant was already getting out of the car, hurrying toward the motionless stegosaur. Ellie got out and looked back as the second Land Cruiser pulled up and the two kids jumped out. “What’s he sick with?” Tim said.

“They’re not sure,” Ellie said.

The great leathery plates along the stegosaur’s spine drooped slightly. It breathed slowly, laboriously, making a wet sound with each breath.

“Is it contagious?” Lex said.

They walked toward the tiny head of the animal, where Grant and the vet were on their knees, peering into the stegosaur’s mouth.

Lex wrinkled her nose. “This thing sure is big,” she said. “And smelly.”

“Yes, it is.” Ellie had already noticed the stegosaur had a peculiar odor, like rotting fish. It reminded her of something she knew, but couldn’t quite place. In any case, she had never smelled a stegosaur before. Maybe this was its characteristic odor. But she had her doubts. Most herbivores did not have a strong smell. Nor did their droppings. It was reserved for the meat-eaters to develop a real stink.

“Is that because it’s sick?” Lex asked.

“Maybe. And don’t forget the vet’s tranquilized it.”

“Ellie, have a look at this tongue,” Grant said.

The dark purple tongue drooped limply from the animal’s mouth. The vet shone a light on it so she could see the very fine silvery blisters. “Microvesicles,” Ellie said. “Interesting.”

“We’ve had a difficult time with these stegos,” the vet said. “They’re always getting sick.”

“What are the symptoms?” Ellie asked. She scratched the tongue with her fingernail. A clear liquid exuded from the broken blisters.

“Ugh,” Lex said.

“Imbalance, disorientation, labored breathing, and massive diarrhea,” Harding said. “Seems to happen about once every six weeks or so.”

“They feed continuously?”

“Oh yes,” Harding said. “Animal this size has to take in a minimum of five or six hundred pounds of plant matter daily just to keep going. They’re constant foragers.”

“Then it’s not likely to be poisoning from a plant,” Ellie said. Constant browsers would be constantly sick if they were eating a toxic plant. Not every six weeks.

“Exactly,” the vet said.

“May I?” Ellie asked. She took the flashlight from the vet. “You have pupillary effects from the tranquilizer?” she said, shining the light in the stegosaur’s eye.

“Yes. There’s a miotic effect, pupils are constricted.”

“But these pupils are dilated,” she said.

Harding looked. There was no question: the stegosaur’s pupil was dilated, and did not contract when light shone on it. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “That’s a pharmacological effect.”

“Yes.” Ellie got back on her feet and looked around. “What is the animal’s range?”

“About five square miles.”

“In this general area?” she asked. They were in an open meadow, with scattered rocky outcrops, and intermittent plumes of steam rising from the ground. It was late afternoon, and the sky was pink beneath the lowering gray clouds.

“Their range is mostly north and east of here,” Harding said. “But when they get sick, they’re usually somewhere around this particular area.”

It was an interesting puzzle, she thought. How to explain the periodicity of the poisoning? She pointed across the field. “You see those low, delicate-looking bushes?”

“West Indian lilac.” Harding nodded. “We know it’s toxic. The animals don’t eat it.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. We monitor them on video, and I’ve checked droppings just to be certain. The stegos never eat the lilac bushes.”

Melia azedarach, called chinaberry or West Indian lilac, contained a number of toxic alkaloids. The Chinese used the plant as a fish poison.

“They don’t eat it,” the vet said.

“Interesting,” Ellie said. “Because otherwise I would have said that this animal shows all the classic signs of Melia toxicity: stupor, blistering of the mucous membranes, and pupillary dilatation.” She set off toward the field to examine the plants more closely, her body bent over the ground. “You’re right,” she said. “Plants are healthy, no sign of being eaten. None at all.”

“And there’s the six-week interval,” the vet reminded her.

“The stegosaurs come here how often?”

“About once a week,” he said. “Stegos make a slow loop through their home-range territory, feeding as they go. They complete the loop in about a week.”

“But they’re only sick once every six weeks.”

“Correct,” Harding said.

“This is boring,” Lex said.

“Ssshh,” Tim said. “Dr. Sattler’s trying to think.”

“Unsuccessfully,” Ellie said, walking farther out into the field.

Behind her, she heard Lex saying, “Anybody want to play a little pickle?”

Ellie stared at the ground. The field was rocky in many places. She could hear the sound of the surf, somewhere to the left. There were berries among the rocks. Perhaps the animals were just eating berries. But that didn’t make sense. West Indian lilac berries were terribly bitter.

“Finding anything?” Grant said, coming up to join her.

Ellie sighed. “Just rocks,” she said. “We must be near the beach, because all these rocks are smooth. And they’re in funny little piles.”

“Funny little piles?” Grant said.

“All over. There’s one pile right there.” She pointed.

As soon as she did, she realized what she was looking at. The rocks were worn, but it had nothing to do with the ocean. These rocks were heaped in small piles, almost as if they had been thrown down that way.

They were piles of gizzard stones.

Many birds and crocodiles swallowed small stones, which collected in a muscular pouch in the digestive tract, called the gizzard. Squeezed by the muscles of the gizzard, the stones helped crush tough plant food before it reached the stomach, and thus aided digestion. Some scientists thought dinosaurs also had gizzard stones. For one thing, dinosaur teeth were too small, and too little worn, to have been used for chewing food. It was presumed that dinosaurs swallowed their food whole and let the gizzard stones break down the plant fibers. And some skeletons had been found with an associated pile of small stones in the abdominal area. But it had never been verified, and—

“Gizzard stones,” Grant said.

“I think so, yes. They swallow these stones, and after a few weeks the stones are worn smooth, so they regurgitate them, leaving this little pile, and swallow fresh stones. And when they do, they swallow berries as well. And get sick.”

“I’ll be damned,” Grant said. “I’m sure you’re right.”

He looked at the pile of stones, brushing through them with his hand, following the instinct of a paleontologist.

Then he stopped.

“Ellie,” he said. “Take a look at this.”

“Put it there, babe! Right in the old mitt!” Lex cried, and Gennaro threw the ball to her.

She threw it back so hard that his hand stung. “Take it easy! I don’t have a glove!”

“You wimp!” she said contemptuously.

Annoyed, he fired the ball at her, and heard it smack! in the leather. “Now that’s more like it,” she said.

Standing by the dinosaur, Gennaro continued to play catch as he talked to Malcolm. “How does this sick dinosaur fit into your theory?”

“It’s predicted,” Malcolm said.

Gennaro shook his head. “Is anything not predicted by your theory?”

“Look,” Malcolm said. “It’s nothing to do with me. It’s chaos theory. But I notice nobody is willing to listen to the consequences of the mathematics. Because they imply very large consequences for human life. Much larger than Heisenberg’s principle or Gödel’s theorem, which everybody rattles on about. Those are actually rather academic considerations. Philosophical considerations. But chaos theory concerns everyday life. Do you know why computers were first built?”

“No,” Gennaro said.

“Burn it in there,” Lex yelled.

“Computers were built in the late 1940s because mathematicians like John von Neumann thought that if you had a computer—a machine to handle a lot of variables simultaneously—you would be able to predict the weather. Weather would finally fall to human understanding. And men believed that dream for the next forty years. They believed that prediction was just a function of keeping track of things. If you knew enough, you could predict anything. That’s been a cherished scientific belief since Newton.”

“And?”

“Chaos theory throws it right out the window. It says that you can never predict certain phenomena at all. You can never predict the weather more than a few days away. All the money that has been spent on long-range forecasting—about half a billion dollars in the last few decades—is money wasted. It’s a fool’s errand. It’s as pointless as trying to turn lead into gold. We look back at the alchemists and laugh at what they were trying to do, but future generations will laugh at us the same way. We’ve tried the impossible—and spent a lot of money doing it. Because in fact there are great categories of phenomena that are inherently unpredictable.”

“Chaos says that?”

“Yes, and it is astonishing how few people care to hear it,” Malcolm said. “I gave all this information to Hammond long before he broke ground on this place. You’re going to engineer a bunch of prehistoric animals and set them on an island? Fine. A lovely dream. Charming. But it won’t go as planned. It is inherently unpredictable, just as the weather is.”

“You told him this?” Gennaro said.

“Yes. I also told him where the deviations would occur. Obviously the fitness of the animals to the environment was one area. This stegosaur is a hundred million years old. It isn’t adapted to our world. The air is different, the solar radiation is different, the land is different, the insects are different, the sounds are different, the vegetation is different. Everything is different. The oxygen content is decreased. This poor animal’s like a human being at ten thousand feet altitude. Listen to him wheezing.”

“And the other areas?”

“Broadly speaking, the ability of the park to control the spread of life-forms. Because the history of evolution is that life escapes all barriers. Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way.” Malcolm shook his head. “I don’t mean to be philosophical, but there it is.”

Gennaro looked over. Ellie and Grant were across the field, waving their arms and shouting.

“Did you get my Coke?” Dennis Nedry asked, as Muldoon came back into the control room.

Muldoon didn’t bother to answer. He went directly to the monitor and looked at what was happening. Over the radio he heard Harding’s voice saying, “—the stego—finally—handle on—now—”

“What’s that about?” Muldoon said.

“They’re down by the south point,” Arnold said. “That’s why they’re breaking up a little. I’ll switch them to another channel. But they found out what’s wrong with the stegos. Eating some kind of berry.”

Hammond nodded. “I knew we’d solve that sooner or later,” he said.

“It’s not very impressive,” Gennaro said. He held the white fragment, no larger than a postage stamp, up on his fingertip in the fading light. “You sure about this, Alan?”

“Absolutely sure,” Grant said. “What gives it away is the patterning on the interior surface, the interior curve. Turn it over and you will notice a faint pattern of raised lines, making roughly triangular shapes.”

“Yes, I see them.”

“Well, I’ve dug out two eggs with patterns like that at my site in Montana.”

“You’re saying this is a piece of dinosaur eggshell?”

“Absolutely,” Grant said.

Harding shook his head. “These dinosaurs can’t breed.”

“Evidently they can,” Gennaro said.

“That must be a bird egg,” Harding said. “We have literally dozens of species on the island.”

Grant shook his head. “Look at the curvature. The shell is almost flat. That’s from a very big egg. And notice the thickness of the shell. Unless you have ostriches on this island, it’s a dinosaur egg.”

“But they can’t possibly breed,” Harding insisted. “All the animals are female.”

“All I know,” Grant said, “is that this is a dinosaur egg.”

Malcolm said, “Can you tell the species?”

“Yes,” Grant said. “It’s a velociraptor egg.”

CONTROL

“Absolutely absurd,” Hammond said in the control room, listening to the report over the radio. “It must be a bird egg. That’s all it can be.”

The radio crackled. He heard Malcolm’s voice. “Let’s do a little test, shall we? Ask Mr. Arnold to run one of his computer tallies.”

“Now?”

“Yes, right now. I understand you can transmit it to the screen in Dr. Harding’s car. Do that, too, will you?”

“No problem,” Arnold said. A moment later, the screen in the control room printed out:

“I hope you’re satisfied,” Hammond said. “Are you receiving it down there on your screen?”

“We see it,” Malcolm said.

“Everything accounted for, as always.” He couldn’t keep the satisfaction out of his voice.

“Now then,” Malcolm said. “Can you have the computer search for a different number of animals?”

“Like what?” Arnold said.

“Try two hundred thirty-nine.”

“Just a minute,” Arnold said, frowning. A moment later the screen printed:

Hammond sat forward. “What the hell is that?”

“We picked up another compy.”

“From where?”

“I don’t know!”

The radio crackled. “Now, then: can you ask the computer to search for, let us say, three hundred animals?”

“What is he talking about?” Hammond said, his voice rising. “Three hundred animals? What’s he talking about?”

“Just a minute,” Arnold said. “That’ll take a few minutes.” He punched buttons on the screen. The first line of the totals appeared:

Total Animals 239

“I don’t understand what he’s driving at,” Hammond said.

“I’m afraid I do,” Arnold said. He watched the screen. The numbers on the first line were clicking:

Total Animals 244

“Two hundred forty-four?” Hammond said. “What’s going on?”

“The computer is counting the animals in the park,” Wu said. “All the animals.”

“I thought that’s what it always did.” He spun. “Nedry! Have you screwed up again?”

“No,” Nedry said, looking up from his console. “Computer allows the operator to enter an expected number of animals, in order to make the counting process faster. But it’s a convenience, not a flaw.”

“He’s right,” Arnold said. “We just always used the base count of two hundred thirty-eight because we assumed there couldn’t be more.”

Total Animals 262

“Wait a minute,” Hammond said. “These animals can’t breed. The computer must be counting field mice or something.”

“I think so, too,” Arnold said. “It’s almost certainly an error in the visual tracking. But we’ll know soon enough.”

Hammond turned to Wu. “They can’t breed, can they?”

“No,” Wu said.

Total Animals 270

“Where are they coming from?” Arnold said.

“Damned if I know,” Wu said.

They watched the numbers climb.

Total Animals 283

Over the radio, they heard Gennaro say, “Holy shit, how much more?”

And they heard the girl say, “I’m getting hungry. When are we going home?”

“Pretty soon, Lex.”

On the screen, there was a flashing error message:

ERROR: Search Params: 300 Animals Not Found

“An error,” Hammond said, nodding. “I thought so. I had the feeling all along there must be an error.”

But a moment later the screen printed:

The radio crackled. “Now you see the flaw in your procedures,” Malcolm said. “You only tracked the expected number of dinosaurs. You were worried about losing animals, and your procedures were designed to advise you instantly if you had less than the expected number. But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was, you had more than the expected number.”

“Christ,” Arnold said.

“There can’t be more,” Wu said. “We know how many we’ve released. There can’t be more than that.”

“Afraid so, Henry,” Malcolm said. “They’re breeding.”

“No.”

“Even if you don’t accept Grant’s eggshell, you can prove it with your own data. Take a look at the compy height graph. Arnold will put it up for you.”

“Notice anything about it?” Malcolm said.

“It’s a Gaussian distribution,” Wu said. “Normal curve.”

“But didn’t you say you introduced the compys in three batches? At six-month intervals?”

“Yes …”

“Then you should get a graph with peaks for each of the three separate batches that were introduced,” Malcolm said, tapping the keyboard. “Like this.”

“But you didn’t get this graph,” Malcolm said. “The graph you actually got is a graph of a breeding population. Your compys are breeding.”

Wu shook his head. “I don’t see how.”

“They’re breeding, and so are the othnielia, the maiasaurs, the hypsys—and the velociraptors.”

“Christ,” Muldoon said. “There are raptors free in the park.”

“Well, it’s not that bad,” Hammond said, looking at the screen. “We have increases in just three categories—well, five categories. Very small increases in two of them …”

“What are you talking about?” Wu said, loudly. “Don’t you know what this means?”

“Of course I know what this means, Henry,” Hammond said. “It means you screwed up.”

“Absolutely not.”

“You’ve got breeding dinosaurs out there, Henry.”

“But they’re all female,” Wu said. “It’s impossible. There must be a mistake. And look at the numbers. A small increase in the big animals, the maiasaurs and the hypsys. And big increases in the number of small animals. It just doesn’t make sense. It must be a mistake.”

The radio clicked. “Actually not,” Grant said. “I think these numbers confirm that breeding is taking place. In seven different sites around the island.”

BREEDING SITES

The sky was growing darker. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Grant and the others leaned in the doors of the Jeep, staring at the screen on the dashboard. “Breeding sites?” Wu said, over the radio.

“Nests,” Grant said. “Assuming the average clutch is eight to twelve hatching eggs, these data would indicate the compys have two nests. The raptors have two nests. The othys have one nest. And the hypsys and the maias have one nest each.”

“Where are these nests?”

“We’ll have to find them,” Grant said. “Dinosaurs build their nests in secluded places.”

“But why are there so few big animals?” Wu said. “If there is a maia nest of eight to twelve eggs, there should be eight to twelve new maias. Not just one.”

“That’s right,” Grant said. “Except that the raptors and the compys that are loose in the park are probably eating the eggs of the bigger animals—and perhaps eating the newly hatched young, as well.”

“But we’ve never seen that,” Arnold said, over the radio.

“Raptors are nocturnal,” he said. “Is anyone watching the park at night?”

There was a long silence.

“I didn’t think so,” Grant said.

“It still doesn’t make sense,” Wu said. “You can’t support fifty additional animals on a couple of nests of eggs.”

“No,” Grant said. “I assume they are eating something else as well. Perhaps small rodents. Mice and rats?”

There was another silence.

“Let me guess,” Grant said. “When you first came to the island, you had a problem with rats. But as time passed, the problem faded away.”

“Yes. That’s true.…”

“And you never thought to investigate why.”

“Well, we just assumed …” Arnold said.

“Look,” Wu said, “the fact remains, all the animals are female. They can’t breed.”

Grant had been thinking about that. He had recently learned of an intriguing West German study that he suspected held the answer. “When you made your dinosaur DNA,” Grant said, “you were working with fragmentary pieces, is that right?”

“Yes,” Wu said.

“In order to make a complete strand, were you ever required to include DNA fragments from other species?”

“Occasionally, yes,” Wu said. “It’s the only way to accomplish the job. Sometimes we included avian DNA, from a variety of birds, and sometimes reptilian DNA.”

“Any amphibian DNA? Specifically, frog DNA?”

“Possibly. I’d have to check.”

“Check,” Grant said. “I think you’ll find that holds the answer.”

Malcolm said, “Frog DNA? Why frog DNA?”

Gennaro said impatiently, “Listen, this is all very intriguing, but we’re forgetting the main question: have any animals gotten off the island?”

Grant said, “We can’t tell from these data.”

“Then how are we going to find out?”

“There’s only one way I know,” Grant said. “We’ll have to find the individual dinosaur nests, inspect them, and count the remaining egg fragments. From that we may be able to determine how many animals were originally hatched. And we can begin to assess whether any are missing.”

Malcolm said, “Even so, you won’t know if the missing animals are killed, or dead from natural causes, or whether they have left the island.”

“No,” Grant said, “but it’s a start. And I think we can get more information from an intensive look at the population graphs.”

“How are we going to find these nests?”

“Actually,” Grant said, “I think the computer will be able to help us with that.”

“Can we go back now?” Lex said. “I’m hungry.”

“Yes, let’s go,” Grant said, smiling at her. “You’ve been very patient.”

“You’ll be able to eat in about twenty minutes,” Ed Regis said, starting toward the two Land Cruisers.

“I’ll stay for a while,” Ellie said, “and get photos of the stego with Dr. Harding’s camera. Those vesicles in the mouth will have cleared up by tomorrow.”

“I want to get back,” Grant said. “I’ll go with the kids.”

“I will, too,” Malcolm said.

“I think I’ll stay,” Gennaro said, “and go back with Harding in his Jeep, with Dr. Sattler.”

“Fine, let’s go.”

They started walking. Malcolm said, “Why exactly is our lawyer staying?”

Grant shrugged. “I think it might have something to do with Dr. Sattler.”

“Really? The shorts, you think?”

“It’s happened before,” Grant said.

When they came to the Land Cruisers, Tim said, “I want to ride in the front one this time, with Dr. Grant.”

Malcolm said, “Unfortunately, Dr. Grant and I need to talk.”

“I’ll just sit and listen. I won’t say anything,” Tim said.

“It’s a private conversation,” Malcolm said.

“Tell you what, Tim,” Ed Regis said. “Let them sit in the rear car by themselves. We’ll sit in the front car, and you can use the night-vision goggles. Have you ever used night-vision goggles, Tim? They’re goggles with very sensitive CCDs that allow you to see in the dark.”

“Neat,” he said, and moved toward the first car.

“Hey!” Lex said. “I want to use it, too.”

“No,” Tim said.

“No fair! No fair! You get to do everything, Timmy!”

Ed Regis watched them go and said to Grant, “I can see what the ride back is going to be like.”

Grant and Malcolm climbed into the second car. A few raindrops spattered the windshield. “Let’s get going,” Ed Regis said. “I’m about ready for dinner. And I could do with a nice banana daiquiri. What do you say, folks? Daiquiri sound good?” He pounded the metal panel of the car. “See you back at camp,” he said, and he started running toward the first car, and climbed aboard.

A red light on the dashboard blinked. With a soft electric whirr, the Land Cruisers started off.

Driving back in the fading light, Malcolm seemed oddly subdued. Grant said, “You must feel vindicated. About your theory.”

“As a matter of fact, I’m feeling a bit of dread. I suspect we are at a very dangerous point.”

“Why?”

“Intuition.”

“Do mathematicians believe in intuition?”

“Absolutely. Very important, intuition. Actually, I was thinking of fractals,” Malcolm said. “You know about fractals?”

Grant shook his head. “Not really, no.”

“Fractals are a kind of geometry, associated with a man named Mandelbrot. Unlike ordinary Euclidean geometry that everybody learns in school—squares and cubes and spheres—fractal geometry appears to describe real objects in the natural world. Mountains and clouds are fractal shapes. So fractals are probably related to reality. Somehow.

“Well, Mandelbrot found a remarkable thing with his geometric tools. He found that things looked almost identical at different scales.”

“At different scales?” Grant said.

“For example,” Malcolm said, “a big mountain, seen from far away, has a certain rugged mountain shape. If you get closer, and examine a small peak of the big mountain, it will have the same mountain shape. In fact, you can go all the way down the scale to a tiny speck of rock, seen under a microscope—it will have the same basic fractal shape as the big mountain.”

“I don’t really see why this is worrying you,” Grant said. He yawned. He smelled the sulfur fumes of the volcanic steam. They were coming now to the section of road that ran near the coastline, overlooking the beach and the ocean.

“It’s a way of looking at things,” Malcolm said. “Mandelbrot found a sameness from the smallest to the largest. And this sameness of scale also occurs for events.”

“Events?”

“Consider cotton prices,” Malcolm said. “There are good records of cotton prices going back more than a hundred years. When you study fluctuations in cotton prices, you find that the graph of price fluctuations in the course of a day looks basically like the graph for a week, which looks basically like the graph for a year, or for ten years. And that’s how things are. A day is like a whole life. You start out doing one thing, but end up doing something else, plan to run an errand, but never get there.… And at the end of your life, your whole existence has that same haphazard quality, too. Your whole life has the same shape as a single day.”

“I guess it’s one way to look at things,” Grant said.

“No,” Malcolm said. “It’s the only way to look at things. At least, the only way that is true to reality. You see, the fractal idea of sameness carries within it an aspect of recursion, a kind of doubling back on itself, which means that events are unpredictable. That they can change suddenly, and without warning.”

“Okay …”

“But we have soothed ourselves into imagining sudden change as something that happens outside the normal order of things. An accident, like a car crash. Or beyond our control, like a fatal illness. We do not conceive of sudden, radical, irrational change as built into the very fabric of existence. Yet it is. And chaos theory teaches us,” Malcolm said, “that straight linearity, which we have come to take for granted in everything from physics to fiction, simply does not exist. Linearity is an artificial way of viewing the world. Real life isn’t a series of interconnected events occurring one after another like beads strung on a necklace. Life is actually a series of encounters in which one event may change those that follow in a wholly unpredictable, even devastating way.” Malcolm sat back in his seat, looking toward the other Land Cruiser, a few yards ahead. “That’s a deep truth about the structure of our universe. But, for some reason, we insist on behaving as if it were not true.”

At that moment, the cars jolted to a stop.

“What’s happened?” Grant said.

Up ahead, they saw the kids in the car, pointing toward the ocean. Offshore, beneath lowering clouds, Grant saw the dark outline of the supply boat making its way back toward Puntarenas.

“Why have we stopped?” Malcolm said.

Grant turned on the radio and heard the girl saying excitedly, “Look there, Timmy! You see it, it’s there!”

Malcolm squinted at the boat. “They talking about the boat?”

“Apparently.”

Ed Regis climbed out of the front car and came running back to their window. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but the kids are all worked up. Do you have binoculars here?”

“For what?”

“The little girl says she sees something on the boat. Some kind of animal,” Regis said.

Grant grabbed the binoculars and rested his elbows on the window ledge of the Land Cruiser. He scanned the long shape of the supply ship. It was so dark it was almost a silhouette; as he watched, the ship’s running lights came on, brilliant in the dark purple twilight.

“Do you see anything?” Regis said.

“No,” Grant said.

“They’re low down,” Lex said, over the radio. “Look low down.”

Grant tilted the binoculars down, scanning the hull just above the waterline. The supply ship was broad-beamed, with a splash flange that ran the length of the ship. But it was quite dark now, and he could hardly make out details.

“No, nothing …”

“I can see them,” Lex said impatiently. “Near the back. Look near the back!”

“How can she see anything in this light?” Malcolm said.

“Kids can see,” Grant said. “They’ve got visual acuity we forgot we ever had.”

He swung the binoculars toward the stern, moving them slowly, and suddenly he saw the animals. They were playing, darting among the silhouetted stern structures. He could see them only briefly, but even in the fading light he could tell that they were upright animals, about two feet tall, standing with stiff balancing tails.

“You see them now?” Lex said.

“I see them,” he said.

“What are they?”

“They’re raptors,” Grant said. “At least two. Maybe more. Juveniles.”

“Jesus,” Ed Regis said. “That boat’s going to the mainland.”

Malcolm shrugged. “Don’t get excited. Just call the control room and tell them to recall the boat.”

Ed Regis reached in and grabbed the radio from the dashboard. They heard hissing static, and clicks as he rapidly changed channels. “There’s something wrong with this one,” he said. “It’s not working.”

He ran off to the first Land Cruiser. They saw him duck into it. Then he looked back at them. “There’s something wrong with both the radios,” he said. “I can’t raise the control room.”

“Then let’s get going,” Grant said.

In the control room, Muldoon stood before the big windows that overlooked the park. At seven o’clock, the quartz floodlights came on all over the island, turning the landscape into a glowing jewel stretching away to the south. This was his favorite moment of the day. He heard the crackle of static from the radios.

“The Land Cruisers have started again,” Arnold said. “They’re on their way home.”

“But why did they stop?” Hammond said. “And why can’t we talk to them?”

“I don’t know,” Arnold said. “Maybe they turned off the radios in the cars.”

“Probably the storm,” Muldoon said. “Interference from the storm.”

“They’ll be here in twenty minutes,” Hammond said. “You better call down and make sure the dining room is ready for them. Those kids are going to be hungry.”

Arnold picked up the phone and heard a steady monotonous hiss. “What’s this? What’s going on?”

“Jesus, hang that up,” Nedry said. “You’ll screw up the data stream.”

“You’ve taken all the phone lines? Even the internal ones?”

“I’ve taken all the lines that communicate outside,” Nedry said. “But your internal lines should still work.”

Arnold punched console buttons one after another. He heard nothing but hissing on all the lines.

“Looks like you’ve got ’em all.”

“Sorry about that,” Nedry said. “I’ll clear a couple for you at the end of the next transmission, in about fifteen minutes.” He yawned. “Looks like a long weekend for me. I guess I’ll go get that Coke now.” He picked up his shoulder bag and headed for the door. “Don’t touch my console, okay?”

The door closed.

“What a slob,” Hammond said.

“Yeah,” Arnold said. “But I guess he knows what he’s doing.”

Along the side of the road, clouds of volcanic steam misted rainbows in the bright quartz lights. Grant said into the radio, “How long does it take the ship to reach the mainland?”

“Eighteen hours,” Ed Regis said. “More or less. It’s pretty reliable.” He glanced at his watch. “It should arrive around eleven tomorrow morning.”

Grant frowned. “You still can’t talk to the control room?”

“Not so far.”

“How about Harding? Can you reach him?”

“No, I’ve tried. He may have his radio turned off.”

Malcolm was shaking his head. “So we’re the only ones who know about the animals on the ship.”

“I’m trying to raise somebody,” Ed Regis said. “I mean, Christ, we don’t want those animals on the mainland.”

“How long until we get back to the base?”

“From here, another sixteen, seventeen minutes,” Ed Regis said.

At night, the whole road was illuminated by big floodlights. It felt to Grant as if they were driving through a bright green tunnel of leaves. Large raindrops spattered the windshield.

Grant felt the Land Cruiser slow, then stop. “Now what?”

Lex said, “I don’t want to stop. Why did we stop?”

And then, suddenly, all the floodlights went out. The road was plunged into darkness. Lex said, “Hey!”

“Probably just a power outage or something,” Ed Regis said. “I’m sure the lights’ll be on in a minute.”

“What the hell?” Arnold said, staring at his monitors.

“What happened?” Muldoon said. “You lose power?”

“Yeah, but only power on the perimeter. Everything in this building’s working fine. But outside, in the park, the power is gone. Lights, TV cameras, everything.” His remote video monitors had gone black.

“What about the two Land Cruisers?”

“Stopped somewhere around the tyrannosaur paddock.”

“Well,” Muldoon said, “call Maintenance and let’s get the power back on.”

Arnold picked up one of his phones and heard hissing: Nedry’s computers talking to each other. “No phones. That damn Nedry. Nedry! Where the hell is he?”

Dennis Nedry pushed open the door marked FERTILIZATION. With the perimeter power out, all the security-card locks were disarmed. Every door in the building opened with a touch.

The problems with the security system were high on Jurassic Park’s bug list. Nedry wondered if anybody ever imagined that it wasn’t a bug—that Nedry had programmed it that way. He had built in a classic trap door. Few programmers of large computer systems could resist the temptation to leave themselves a secret entrance. Partly it was common sense: if inept users locked up the system—and then called you for help—you always had a way to get in and repair the mess. And partly it was a kind of signature: Kilroy was here.

And partly it was insurance for the future. Nedry was annoyed with the Jurassic Park project; late in the schedule, InGen had demanded extensive modifications to the system but hadn’t been willing to pay for them, arguing they should be included under the original contract. Lawsuits were threatened; letters were written to Nedry’s other clients, implying that Nedry was unreliable. It was blackmail, and in the end Nedry had been forced to eat his overages on Jurassic Park and to make the changes that Hammond wanted.

But later, when he was approached by Lewis Dodgson at Biosyn, Nedry was ready to listen. And able to say that he could indeed get past Jurassic Park security. He could get into any room, any system, anywhere in the park. Because he had programmed it that way. Just in case.

He entered the fertilization room. The lab was deserted; as he had anticipated, all the staff was at dinner. Nedry unzipped his shoulder bag and removed the can of Gillette shaving cream. He unscrewed the base, and saw the interior was divided into a series of cylindrical slots.

He pulled on a pair of heavy insulated gloves and opened the walk-in freezer marked CONTENTS VIABLE BIOLOGICAL MAINTAIN — 10°C MINIMUM. The freezer was the size of a small closet, with shelves from floor to ceiling. Most of the shelves contained reagents and liquids in plastic sacs. To one side he saw a smaller nitrogen cold box with a heavy ceramic door. He opened it, and a rack of small tubes slid out, in a cloud of white liquid-nitrogen smoke.

The embryos were arranged by species: Stegosaurus, Apatosaurus, Hadrosaurus, Tyrannosaurus. Each embryo in a thin glass container, wrapped in silver foil, stoppered with polylene. Nedry quickly took two of each, slipping them into the shaving cream can.

Then he screwed the base of the can shut and twisted the top. There was a hiss of releasing gas inside, and the can frosted in his hands. Dodgson had said there was enough coolant to last thirty-six hours. More than enough time to get back to San José.

Nedry left the freezer, returned to the main lab. He dropped the can back in his bag, zipped it shut.

He went back into the hallway. The theft had taken less than two minutes. He could imagine the consternation upstairs in the control room, as they began to realize what had happened. All their security codes were scrambled, and all their phone lines were jammed. Without his help, it would take hours to untangle the mess—but in just a few minutes Nedry would be back in the control room, setting things right.

And no one would ever suspect what he had done.

Grinning, Dennis Nedry walked down to the ground floor, nodded to the guard, and continued downstairs to the basement. Passing the neat lines of electric Land Cruisers, he went to the gasoline-powered Jeep parked against the wall. He climbed into it, noticing some odd gray tubing on the passenger seat. It looked almost like a rocket launcher, he thought, as he turned the ignition key and started the Jeep.

Nedry glanced at his watch. From here, into the park, and three minutes straight to the east dock. Three minutes from there back to the control room.

Piece of cake.

“Damn it!” Arnold said, punching buttons on the console. “It’s all screwed up.”

Muldoon was standing at the windows, looking out at the park. The lights had gone out all over the island, except in the immediate area around the main buildings. He saw a few staff personnel hurrying to get out of the rain, but no one seemed to realize anything was wrong. Muldoon looked over at the visitor lodge, where the lights burned brightly.

“Uh-oh,” Arnold said. “We have real trouble.”

“What’s that?” Muldoon said. He turned away from the window, and so he didn’t see the Jeep drive out of the underground garage and head east along the maintenance road into the park.

“That idiot Nedry turned off the security systems,” Arnold said.

“The whole building’s opened up. None of the doors are locked any more.”

“I’ll notify the guards,” Muldoon said.

“That’s the least of it,” Arnold said. “When you turn off the security, you turn off all the peripheral fences as well.”

“The fences?” Muldoon said.

“The electrical fences,” Arnold said. “They’re off, all over the island.”

“You mean …”

“That’s right,” Arnold said. “The animals can get out now.” Arnold lit a cigarette. “Probably nothing will happen, but you never know.…”

Muldoon started toward the door. “I better drive out and bring in the people in those two Land Cruisers,” he said. “Just in case.”

Muldoon quickly went downstairs to the garage. He wasn’t really worried about the fences’ going down. Most of the dinosaurs had been in their paddocks for nine months or more, and they had brushed up against the fences more than once, with notable results. Muldoon knew how quickly animals learned to avoid shock stimuli. You could train a laboratory pigeon with just two or three stimulation events. So it was unlikely the dinosaurs would now approach the fences.

Muldoon was more concerned about what the people in the cars would do. He didn’t want them getting out of the Land Cruisers, because once the power came back on, the cars would start moving again, whether the people were inside them or not. They might be left behind. Of course, in the rain it was unlikely they would leave the cars. But, still… you never knew.…

He reached the garage and hurried toward the Jeep. It was lucky, he thought, that he had had the foresight to put the launcher in it. He could start right out, and be out there in—

It was gone!

“What the hell?” Muldoon stared at the empty parking space, astonished.

The Jeep was gone!

What the hell was happening?

FOURTH ITERATION

“Inevitably, underlying instabilities begin to appear.”

IAN MALCOLM

THE MAIN ROAD

Rain drummed loudly on the roof of the Land Cruiser. Tim felt the night-vision goggles pressing heavily on his forehead. He reached for the knob near his ear and adjusted the intensity. There was a brief phosphorescent flare, and then, in shades of electronic green and black, he could see the Land Cruiser behind, with Dr. Grant and Dr. Malcolm inside. Neat!

Dr. Grant was staring out the front windshield toward him. Tim saw him pick up the radio from the dash. There was a burst of static, and then he heard Dr. Grant’s voice: “Can you see us back here?”

Tim picked up the radio from Ed Regis. “I see you.”

“Everything all right?”

“We’re fine, Dr. Grant.”

“Stay in the car.”

“We will. Don’t worry.” He clicked the radio off.

Ed Regis snorted. “It’s pouring down rain. Of course we’ll stay in the car,” he muttered.

Tim turned to look at the foliage at the side of the road. Through the goggles, the foliage was a bright electronic green, and beyond he could see sections of the green grid pattern of the fence. The Land Cruisers were stopped on the downslope of a hill, which must mean they were someplace near the tyrannosaur area. It would be amazing to see a tyrannosaur with these night-vision goggles. A real thrill. Maybe the tyrannosaur would come to the fence and look over at them. Tim wondered if its eyes would glow in the dark when he saw them. That would be neat.

But he didn’t see anything, and eventually he stopped looking. Everyone in the cars fell silent. The rain thrummed on the roof of the car. Sheets of water streamed down over the sides of the windows. It was hard for Tim to see out, even with the goggles.

“How long have we been sitting here?” Malcolm asked.

“I don’t know. Four or five minutes.”

“I wonder what the problem is.”

“Maybe a short circuit from the rain.”

“But it happened before the rain really started.”

There was another silence. In a tense voice, Lex said, “But there’s no lightning, right?” She had always been afraid of lightning, and she now sat nervously squeezing her leather mitt in her hands.

Dr. Grant said, “What was that? We didn’t quite read that.”

“Just my sister talking.”

“Oh.”

Tim again scanned the foliage, but saw nothing. Certainly nothing as big as a tyrannosaur. He began to wonder if the tyrannosaurs came out at night. Were they nocturnal animals? Tim wasn’t sure if he had ever read that. He had the feeling that tyrannosaurs were all-weather, day or night animals. The time of day didn’t matter to a tyrannosaur.

The rain continued to pour.

“Hell of a rain,” Ed Regis said. “It’s really coming down.”

Lex said, “I’m hungry.”

“I know that, Lex,” Regis said, “but we’re stuck here, sweetie. The cars run on electricity in buried cables in the road.”

“Stuck for how long?”

“Until they fix the electricity.”

Listening to the sound of the rain, Tim felt himself growing sleepy. He yawned, and turned to look at the palm trees on the left side of the road, and was startled by a sudden thump as the ground shook. He swung back just in time to catch a glimpse of a dark shape as it swiftly crossed the road between the two cars.

“Jesus!”

“What was it?”

“It was huge, it was big as the car—”

“Tim! Are you there?”

He picked up the radio. “Yes, I’m here.”

“Did you see it, Tim?”

“No,” Tim said. “I missed it.”

“What the hell was it?” Malcolm said.

“Are you wearing the night-vision goggles, Tim?”

“Yes. I’ll watch,” Tim said.

“Was it the tyrannosaur?” Ed Regis asked.

“I don’t think so. It was in the road.”

“But you didn’t see it?” Ed Regis said.

“No.”

Tim felt bad that he had missed seeing the animal, whatever it was. There was a sudden white crack of lightning, and his night goggles flared bright green. He blinked his eyes and started counting. “One one thousand … two one thousand …”

The thunder crashed, deafeningly loud and very close.

Lex began to cry. “Oh, no…”

“Take it easy, honey,” Ed Regis said. “It’s just lightning.”

Tim scanned the side of the road. The rain was coming down hard now, shaking the leaves with hammering drops. It made everything move. Everything seemed alive. He scanned the leaves.…

He stopped. There was something beyond the leaves.

Tim looked up, higher.

Behind the foliage, beyond the fence, he saw a thick body with a pebbled, grainy surface like the bark of a tree. But it wasn’t a tree.… He continued to look higher, sweeping the goggles upward—

He saw the huge head of the tyrannosaurus. Just standing there, looking over the fence at the two Land Cruisers. The lightning flashed again, and the big animal rolled its head and bellowed in the glaring light. Then darkness, and silence again, and the pounding rain.

“Tim?”

“Yes, Dr. Grant.”

“You see what it is?”

“Yes, Dr. Grant.”

Tim had the sense that Dr. Grant was trying to talk in a way that wouldn’t upset his sister.

“What’s going on right now?”

“Nothing,” Tim said, watching the tyrannosaur through his night goggles. “Just standing on the other side of the fence.”

“I can’t see much from here, Tim.”

“I can see fine, Dr. Grant. It’s just standing there.”

“Okay.”

Lex continued to cry, snuffling.

There was another pause. Tim watched the tyrannosaur. The head was huge! The animal looked from one vehicle to another. Then back again. It seemed to stare right at Tim.

In the goggles, the eyes glowed bright green.

Tim felt a chill, but then, as he looked down the animal’s body, moving down from the massive head and jaws, he saw the smaller, muscular forelimb. It waved in the air and then it gripped the fence.

“Jesus Christ,” Ed Regis said, staring out the window.

The greatest predator the world has ever known. The most fearsome attack in human history. Somewhere in the back of his publicist’s brain, Ed Regis was still writing copy. But he could feel his knees begin to shake uncontrollably, his trousers flapping like flags. Jesus, he was frightened. He didn’t want to be here. Alone among all the people in the two cars, Ed Regis knew what a dinosaur attack was like. He knew what happened to people. He had seen the mangled bodies that resulted from a raptor attack. He could picture it in his mind. And this was a rex! Much, much bigger! The greatest meat-eater that ever walked the earth!

Jesus.

When the tyrannosaur roared it was terrifying, a scream from some other world. Ed Regis felt the spreading warmth in his trousers. He’d peed in his pants. He was simultaneously embarrassed and terrified. But he knew he had to do something. He couldn’t just stay here. He had to do something. Something. His hands were shaking, trembling against the dash.

“Jesus Christ,” he said again.

“Bad language,” Lex said, wagging her finger at him.

Tim heard the sound of a door opening, and he swung his head away from the tyrannosaur—the night-vision goggles streaked laterally—in time to see Ed Regis stepping out through the open door, ducking his head in the rain.

“Hey,” Lex said, “where are you going?”

Ed Regis just turned and ran in the opposite direction from the tyrannosaur, disappearing into the woods. The door to the Land Cruiser hung open; the paneling was getting wet.

“He left!” Lex said. “Where did he go? He left us alone!”

“Shut the door,” Tim said, but she had started to scream, “He left us! He left us!”

“Tim, what’s going on?” It was Dr. Grant, on the radio. “Tim?”

Tim leaned forward and tried to shut the door. From the backseat, he couldn’t reach the handle. He looked back at the tyrannosaur as lightning flashed again, momentarily silhouetting the huge black shape against the white-flaring sky.

“Tim, what’s happening?”

“He left us, he left us!”

Tim blinked to recover his vision. When he looked again, the tyrannosaur was standing there, exactly as before, motionless and huge. Rain dripped from its jaws. The forelimb gripped the fence.…

And then Tim realized: the tyrannosaur was holding on to the fence!

The fence wasn’t electrified any more!

“Lex, close the door!”

The radio crackled. “Tim!”

“I’m here, Dr. Grant.”

“What’s going on?”

“Regis ran away,” Tim said.

“He what?”

“He ran away. I think he saw that the fence isn’t electrified,” Tim said.

“The fence isn’t electrified?” Malcolm said, over the radio. “Did he say the fence isn’t electrified?”

“Lex,” Tim said, “close the door.” But Lex was screaming, “He left us, he left us!” in a steady, monotonous wail, and there was nothing for Tim to do but climb out of the back door, into the slashing rain, and shut the door for her. Thunder rumbled, and the lightning flashed again. Tim looked up and saw the tyrannosaur crashing down the cyclone fence with a giant hind limb.

“Timmy!”

He jumped back in and slammed the door, the sound lost in the thunderclap.

The radio: “Tim! Are you there?”

He grabbed the radio. “I’m here.” He turned to Lex. “Lock the doors. Get in the middle of the car. And shut up.”

Outside, the tyrannosaur rolled its head and took an awkward step forward. The claws of its feet had caught in the grid of the flattened fence. Lex saw the animal finally, and became silent, still. She watched with wide eyes.

Radio crackle. “Tim.”

“Yes, Dr. Grant.”

“Stay in the car. Stay down. Be quiet. Don’t move, and don’t make noise.”

“Okay.”

“You should be all right. I don’t think it can open the car.”

“Okay.”

“Just stay quiet, so you don’t arouse its attention any more than necessary.”

“Okay.” Tim clicked the radio off. “You hear that, Lex?”

His sister nodded, silently. She never took her eyes off the dinosaur. The tyrannosaur roared. In the glare of lightning, they saw it pull free of the fence and take a bounding step forward.

Now it was standing between the two cars. Tim couldn’t see Dr. Grant’s car any more, because the huge body blocked his view. The rain ran in rivulets down the pebbled skin of the muscular hind legs. He couldn’t see the animal’s head, which was high above the roofline.

The tyrannosaur moved around the side of their car. It went to the very spot where Tim had gotten out of the car. Where Ed Regis had gotten out of the car. The animal paused there. The big head ducked down, toward the mud.

Tim looked back at Dr. Grant and Dr. Malcolm in the rear car. Their faces were tense as they stared forward through the windshield.

The huge head raised back up, jaws open, and then stopped by the side windows. In the glare of lightning, they saw the beady, expressionless reptile eye moving in the socket.

It was looking in the car.

His sister’s breath came in ragged, frightened gasps. He reached out and squeezed her arm, hoping she would stay quiet. The dinosaur continued to stare for a long time through the side window. Perhaps the dinosaur couldn’t really see them, he thought. Finally the head lifted up, out of view again.

“Timmy …” Lex whispered.

“It’s okay,” Tim whispered. “I don’t think it saw us.”

He was looking back toward Dr. Grant when a jolting impact rocked the Land Cruiser and shattered the windshield in a spiderweb as the tyrannosaur’s head crashed against the hood of the Land Cruiser. Tim was knocked flat on the seat. The night-vision goggles slid off his forehead.

He got back up quickly, blinking in the darkness, his mouth warm with blood.

“Lex?”

He couldn’t see his sister anywhere.

The tyrannosaur stood near the front of the Land Cruiser, its chest moving as it breathed, the forelimbs making clawing movements in the air.

“Lex!” Tim whispered. Then he heard her groan. She was lying somewhere on the floor under the front seat.

Then the huge head came down, entirely blocking the shattered windshield. The tyrannosaur banged again on the front hood of the Land Cruiser. Tim grabbed the seat as the car rocked on its wheels. The tyrannosaur banged down twice more, denting the metal.

Then it moved around the side of the car. The big raised tail blocked his view out of all the side windows. At the back, the animal snorted, a deep rumbling growl that blended with the thunder. It sank its jaws into the spare tire mounted on the back of the Land Cruiser and, in a single head shake, tore it away. The rear of the car lifted into the air for a moment; then it thumped down with a muddy splash.

“Tim!” Dr. Grant said. “Tim, are you there?”

Tim grabbed the radio. “We’re okay,” he said. There was a shrill metallic scrape as claws raked the roof of the car. Tim’s heart was pounding in his chest. He couldn’t see anything out of the windows on the right side except pebbled leathery flesh. The tyrannosaur was leaning against the car, which rocked back and forth with each breath, the springs and metal creaking loudly.

Lex groaned again. Tim put down the radio, and started to crawl over into the front seat. The tyrannosaur roared and the metal roof dented downward. Tim felt a sharp pain in his head and tumbled to the floor, onto the transmission hump. He found himself lying alongside Lex, and he was shocked to see that the whole side of her head was covered in blood. She looked unconscious.

There was another jolting impact, and pieces of glass fell all around him. Tim felt rain. He looked up and saw that the front windshield had broken out. There was just a jagged rim of glass and, beyond, the big head of the dinosaur.

Looking down at him.

Tim felt a sudden chill and then the head rushed forward toward him, the jaws open. There was the squeal of metal against teeth, and he felt the hot stinking breath of the animal and a thick tongue stuck into the car through the windshield opening. The tongue slapped wetly around inside the car—he felt the hot lather of dinosaur saliva—and the tyrannosaur roared—a deafening sound inside the car—

The head pulled away abruptly.

Tim scrambled up, avoiding the dent in the roof. There was still room to sit on the front seat by the passenger door. The tyrannosaur stood in the rain near the front fender. It seemed confused by what had happened to it. Blood dripped freely from its jaws.

The tyrannosaur looked at Tim, cocking its head to stare with one big eye. The head moved close to the car, sideways, and peered in. Blood spattered on the dented hood of the Land Cruiser, mixing with the rain.

It can’t get to me, Tim thought. It’s too big.

Then the head pulled away, and in the flare of lightning he saw the hind leg lift up. And the world tilted crazily as the Land Cruiser slammed over on its side, the windows splatting in the mud. He saw Lex fall helplessly against the side window, and he fell down beside her, banging his head. Tim felt dizzy. Then the tyrannosaur’s jaws clamped onto the window frame, and the whole Land Cruiser was lifted up into the air, and shaken.

“Timmy!” Lex shrieked, so near to his ear that it hurt. She was suddenly awake, and he grabbed her as the tyrannosaur crashed the car down again. Tim felt a stabbing pain in his side, and his sister fell on top of him. The car went up again, tilting crazily. Lex shouted “Timmy!” and he saw the door give way beneath her, and she fell out of the car into the mud, but Tim couldn’t answer, because in the next instant everything swung crazily—he saw the trunks of the palm trees sliding downward past him—moving sideways through the air—he glimpsed the ground very far below—the hot roar of the tyrannosaur—the blazing eye—the tops of the palm trees—

And then, with a metallic scraping shriek, the car fell from the tyrannosaur’s jaws, a sickening fall, and Tim’s stomach heaved in the moment before the world became totally black, and silent.

In the other car, Malcolm gasped. “Jesus! What happened to the car?”

Grant blinked his eyes as the lightning faded.

The other car was gone.

Grant couldn’t believe it. He peered forward, trying to see through the rain-streaked windshield. The dinosaur’s body was so large, it was probably just blocking—

No. In another flash of lightning, he saw clearly: the car was gone.

“What happened?” Malcolm said.

“I don’t know.”

Faintly, over the rain, Grant heard the sound of the little girl screaming. The dinosaur was standing in darkness on the road up ahead, but they could see well enough to know that it was bending over now, sniffing the ground.

Or eating something on the ground.

“Can you see?” Malcolm said, squinting.

“Not much, no,” Grant said. The rain pounded on the roof of the car. He listened for the little girl, but he didn’t hear her any more. The two men sat in the car, listening.

“Was it the girl?” Malcolm said, finally. “It sounded like the girl.”

“It did, yes.”

“Was it?”

“I don’t know,” Grant said. He felt a seeping fatigue overtake him. Blurred through the rainy windshield, the dinosaur was coming toward their car. Slow, ominous strides, coming right toward them.

Malcolm said, “You know, at times like this one feels, well, perhaps extinct animals should be left extinct. Don’t you have that feeling now?”

“Yes,” Grant said. He was feeling his heart pounding.

“Umm. Do you, ah, have any suggestions about what we do now?”

“I can’t think of a thing,” Grant said.

Malcolm twisted the handle, kicked open the door, and ran. But even as he did, Grant could see he was too late, the tyrannosaur too close. There was another crack of lightning, and in that instant of glaring white light, Grant watched in horror as the tyrannosaur roared, and leapt forward.

Grant was not clear about exactly what happened next. Malcolm was running, his feet splashing in the mud. The tyrannosaur bounded alongside him and ducked its massive head, and Malcolm was tossed into the air like a small doll.

By then Grant was out of the car, too, feeling the cold rain slashing his face and body. The tyrannosaur had turned its back to him, the huge tail swinging through the air. Grant was tensing to run for the woods when suddenly the tyrannosaur spun back to face him, and roared.

Grant froze.

He was standing beside the passenger door of the Land Cruiser, drenched in rain. He was completely exposed, the tyrannosaur no more than eight feet away. The big animal roared again. At so close a range the sound was terrifyingly loud. Grant felt himself shaking with cold and fright. He pressed his trembling hands against the metal of the door panel to steady them.

The tyrannosaur roared once more, but it did not attack. It cocked its head, and looked with first one eye, then the other, at the Land Cruiser. And it did nothing.

It just stood there.

What was going on?

The powerful jaws opened and closed. The tyrannosaur bellowed angrily, and then the big hind leg came up and crashed down on the roof of the car; the claws slid off with a metal screech, barely missing Grant as he stood there, still unmoving.

The foot splashed in the mud. The head ducked down in a slow arc, and the animal inspected the car, snorting. It peered into the front windshield. Then, moving toward the rear, it banged the passenger door shut, and moved right toward Grant as he stood there. Grant was dizzy with fear, his heart pounding inside his chest. With the animal so close, he could smell the rotten flesh in the mouth, the sweetish blood-smell, the sickening stench of the carnivore.…

He tensed his body, awaiting the inevitable.

The big head slid past him, toward the rear of the car. Grant blinked.

What had happened?

Was it possible the tyrannosaur hadn’t seen him? It seemed as if it hadn’t. But how could that be? Grant looked back to see the animal sniffing the rear-mounted tire. It nudged the tire with its snout, and then the head swung back. Again it approached Grant.

This time the animal stopped, the black flaring nostrils just inches away. Grant felt the animal’s startling hot breath on his face. But the tyrannosaur wasn’t sniffing like a dog. It was just breathing, and if anything it seemed puzzled.

No, the tyrannosaur couldn’t see him. Not if he stood motionless. And in a detached academic corner of his mind he found an explanation for that, a reason why—

The jaws opened before him, the massive head raised up. Grant squeezed his fists together, and bit his lip, trying desperately to remain motionless, to make no sound.

The tyrannosaur bellowed in the night air.

But by now Grant was beginning to understand. The animal couldn’t see him, but it suspected he was there, somewhere, and was trying with its bellowing to frighten Grant into some revealing movement. So long as he stood his ground, Grant realized, he was invisible.

In a final gesture of frustration, the big hind leg lifted up and kicked the Land Cruiser over, and Grant felt searing pain and the surprising sensation of his own body flying through the air. It seemed to be happening very slowly, and he had plenty of time to feel the world turn colder, and watch the ground rush up to strike him in the face.

RETURN

“Oh damn,” Harding said. “Will you look at that.”

They were sitting in Harding’s gasoline-powered Jeep, staring forward past the flick flick of the windshield wipers. In the yellow flare of the headlamps, a big fallen tree blocked the road.

“Must have been the lightning,” Gennaro said. “Hell of a tree.”

“We can’t get past it,” Harding said. “I better tell Arnold in control.” He picked up the radio and twisted the channel dial. “Hello, John. Are you there, John?”

There was nothing but steady hissing static. “I don’t understand,” he said. “The radio lines seem to be down.”

“It must be the storm,” Gennaro said.

“I suppose,” Harding said.

“Try the Land Cruisers,” Ellie said.

Harding opened the other channels, but there was no answer.

“Nothing,” he said. “They’re probably back to camp by now, and outside the range of our little set. In any case, I don’t think we should stay here. It’ll be hours before Maintenance gets a crew out here to move that tree.”

He turned the radio off, and put the Jeep into reverse.

“What’re you going to do?” Ellie said.

“Go back to the turnout, and get onto the maintenance road. Fortunately there’s a second road system,” Harding explained. “We have one road for visitors, and a second road for animal handlers and feed trucks and so on. We’ll drive back on that maintenance road. It’s a little longer. And not so scenic. But you may find it interesting. If the rain lets up, we’ll get a glimpse of some of the animals at night. We should be back in thirty, forty minutes,” Harding said. “If I don’t get lost.”

He turned the Jeep around in the night, and headed south again.

Lightning flashed, and every monitor in the control room went black. Arnold sat forward, his body rigid and tense. Jesus, not now. Not now. That was all he needed—to have everything go out now in the storm. All the main power circuits were surge-protected, of course, but Arnold wasn’t sure about the modems Nedry was using for his data transmission. Most people didn’t know it was possible to blow an entire system through a modem—the lightning pulse climbed back into the computer through the telephone line, and—bang!—no more motherboard. No more RAM. No more file server. No more computer.

The screens flickered. And then, one by one, they came back on.

Arnold sighed, and collapsed back in his chair.

He wondered again where Nedry had gone. Five minutes ago, he’d sent guards to search the building for him. The fat bastard was probably in the bathroom reading a comic book. But the guards hadn’t come back, and they hadn’t called in.

Five minutes. If Nedry was in the building, they should have found him by now.

“Somebody took the damned Jeep,” Muldoon said as he came back in the room. “Have you talked to the Land Cruisers yet?”

“Can’t raise them on the radio,” Arnold said, “I have to use this, because the main board is down. It’s weak, but it ought to work. I’ve tried on all six channels. I know they have radios in the cars, but they’re not answering.”

“That’s not good,” Muldoon said.

“If you want to go out there, take one of the maintenance vehicles.”

“I would,” Muldoon said, “but they’re all in the east garage, more than a mile from here. Where’s Harding?”

“I assume he’s on his way back.”

“Then he’ll pick up the people in the Land Cruisers on his way.”

“I assume so.”

“Anybody tell Hammond the kids aren’t back yet?”

“Hell no,” Arnold said. “I don’t want that son of a bitch running around here, screaming at me. Everything’s all right, for the moment. The Land Cruisers are just stuck in the rain. They can sit a while, until Harding brings them back. Or until we find Nedry, and make that little bastard turn the systems back on.”

“You can’t get them back on?” Muldoon said.

Arnold shook his head. “I’ve been trying. But Nedry’s done something to the system. I can’t figure out what, but if I have to go into the code itself, that’ll take hours. We need Nedry. We’ve got to find the son of a bitch right away.”

NEDRY

The sign said ELECTRIFIED FENCE 10,000 VOLTS DO NOT TOUCH, but Nedry opened it with his bare hand, and unlocked the gate, swinging it wide. He went back to the Jeep, drove through the gate, and then walked back to close it behind him.

Now he was inside the park itself, no more than a mile from the east dock. He stepped on the accelerator and hunched forward over the steering wheel, peering through the rain-slashed windshield as he drove the Jeep down the narrow road. He was driving fast—too fast—but he had to keep to his timetable. He was surrounded on all sides by black jungle, but soon he should be able to see the beach and the ocean off to his left.

This damned storm, he thought. It might screw up everything. Because if Dodgson’s boat wasn’t waiting for him at the east dock when Nedry got there, the whole plan would be ruined. Nedry couldn’t wait very long, or he would be missed back at the control room. The whole idea behind the plan was that he could drive to the east dock, drop off the embryos, and be back in a few minutes, before anyone noticed. It was a good plan, a clever plan. Nedry’d worked on it carefully, refining every detail. This plan was going to make him a million and a half dollars, one point five meg. That was ten years of income in a single tax-free shot, and it was going to change his life. Nedry’d been damned careful, even to the point of making Dodgson meet him in the San Francisco Airport at the last minute with an excuse about wanting to see the money. Actually, Nedry wanted to record his conversation with Dodgson, and mention him by name on the tape. Just so that Dodgson wouldn’t forget he owed the rest of the money, Nedry was including a copy of the tape with the embryos. In short, Nedry had thought of everything.

Except this damned storm.

Something dashed across the road, a white flash in his headlights. It looked like a large rat. It scurried into the underbrush, dragging a fat tail. Possum. Amazing that a possum could survive here. You’d think the dinosaurs would get an animal like that.

Where was the damned dock?

He was driving fast, and he’d already been gone five minutes. He should have reached the east dock by now. Had he taken a wrong turn? He didn’t think so. He hadn’t seen any forks in the road at all.

Then where was the dock?

It was a shock when he came around a corner and saw that the road terminated in a gray concrete barrier, six feet tall and streaked dark with rain. He slammed on the brakes, and the Jeep fishtailed, losing traction in an end-to-end spin, and for a horrified moment he thought he was going to smash into the barrier—he knew he was going to smash—and he spun the wheel frantically, and the Jeep slid to a stop, the headlamps just a foot from the concrete wall.

He paused there, listening to the rhythmic flick of the wipers. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He looked back down the road. He’d obviously taken a wrong turn somewhere. He could retrace his steps, but that would take too long.

He’d better try and find out where the hell he was.

He got out of the Jeep, feeling heavy raindrops spatter his head. It was a real tropical storm, raining so hard that it hurt. He glanced at his watch, pushing the button to illuminate the digital dial. Six minutes gone. Where the hell was he? He walked around the concrete barrier and on the other side, along with the rain, he heard the sound of gurgling water. Could it be the ocean? Nedry hurried forward, his eyes adjusting to the darkness as he went. Dense jungle on all sides. Raindrops slapping on the leaves.

The gurgling sound became louder, drawing him forward, and suddenly he came out of the foliage and felt his feet sink into soft earth and saw the dark currents of the river. The river! He was at the jungle river!

Damn, he thought. At the river where? The river ran for miles through the island. He looked at his watch again. Seven minutes gone. “You have a problem, Dennis,” he said aloud.

As if in reply, there was a soft hooting cry of an owl in the forest.

Nedry hardly noticed; he was worrying about his plan. The plain fact was that time had run out. There wasn’t a choice any more. He had to abandon his original plan. All he could do was go back to the control room, restore the computer, and somehow try to contact Dodgson, to set up the drop at the east dock for the following night. Nedry would have to scramble to make that work, but he thought he could pull it off. The computer automatically logged all calls; after Nedry got through to Dodgson, he’d have to go back into the computer and erase the record of the call. But one thing was sure—he couldn’t stay out in the park any longer, or his absence would be noticed.

Nedry started back, heading toward the glow of the car’s headlights. He was drenched and miserable. He heard the soft hooting cry once more, and this time he paused. That hadn’t really sounded like an owl. And it seemed to be close by, in the jungle somewhere off to his right.

As he listened, he heard a crashing sound in the underbrush. Then silence. He waited, and heard it again. It sounded distinctly like something big, moving slowly through the jungle toward him.

Something big. Something near. A big dinosaur.

Get out of here.

Nedry began to run. He made a lot of noise as he ran, but even so he could hear the animal crashing through the foliage. And hooting.

It was coming closer.

Stumbling over tree roots in the darkness, clawing his way past dripping branches, he saw the Jeep ahead, and the lights shining around the vertical wall of the barrier made him feel better. In a moment he’d be in the car and then he’d get the hell out of here. He scrambled around the barrier and then he froze.

The animal was already there.

But it wasn’t close. The dinosaur stood forty feet away, at the edge of the illumination from the headlamps. Nedry hadn’t taken the tour, so he hadn’t seen the different types of dinosaurs, but this one was strange-looking. The ten-foot-tall body was yellow with black spots, and along the head ran a pair of red V-shaped crests. The dinosaur didn’t move, but again gave its soft hooting cry.

Nedry waited to see if it would attack. It didn’t. Perhaps the headlights from the Jeep frightened it, forcing it to keep its distance, like a fire.

The dinosaur stared at him and then snapped its head in a single swift motion. Nedry felt something smack wetly against his chest. He looked down and saw a dripping glob of foam on his rain-soaked shirt. He touched it curiously, not comprehending.…

It was spit.

The dinosaur had spit on him.

It was creepy, he thought. He looked back at the dinosaur and saw the head snap again, and immediately felt another wet smack against his neck, just above the shirt collar. He wiped it away with his hand.

Jesus, it was disgusting. But the skin of his neck was already starting to tingle and burn. And his hand was tingling, too. It was almost like he had been touched with acid.

Nedry opened the car door, glancing back at the dinosaur to make sure it wasn’t going to attack, and felt a sudden, excruciating pain in his eyes, stabbing like spikes into the back of his skull, and he squeezed his eyes shut and gasped with the intensity of it and threw up his hands to cover his eyes and felt the slippery foam trickling down both sides of his nose.

Spit.

The dinosaur had spit in his eyes.

Even as he realized it, the pain overwhelmed him, and he dropped to his knees, disoriented, wheezing. He collapsed onto his side, his cheek pressed to the wet ground, his breath coming in thin whistles through the constant, ever-screaming pain that caused flashing spots of light to appear behind his tightly shut eyelids.

The earth shook beneath him and Nedry knew the dinosaur was moving, he could hear its soft hooting cry, and despite the pain he forced his eyes open and still he saw nothing but flashing spots against black. Slowly the realization came to him.

He was blind.

The hooting was louder as Nedry scrambled to his feet and staggered back against the side panel of the car, as a wave of nausea and dizziness swept over him. The dinosaur was close now, he could feel it coming close, he was dimly aware of its snorting breath.

But he couldn’t see.

He couldn’t see anything, and his terror was extreme.

He stretched out his hands, waving them wildly in the air to ward off the attack he knew was coming.

And then there was a new, searing pain, like a fiery knife in his belly, and Nedry stumbled, reaching blindly down to touch the ragged edge of his shirt, and then a thick, slippery mass that was surprisingly warm, and with horror he suddenly knew he was holding his own intestines in his hands. The dinosaur had torn him open. His guts had fallen out.

Nedry fell to the ground and landed on something scaly and cold, it was the animal’s foot, and then there was new pain on both sides of his head. The pain grew worse, and as he was lifted to his feet he knew the dinosaur had his head in its jaws, and the horror of that realization was followed by a final wish, that it would all be ended soon.

BUNGALOW

“More coffee?” Hammond asked politely.

“No, thank you,” Henry Wu said, leaning back in his chair. “I couldn’t eat anything more.” They were sitting in the dining room of Hammond’s bungalow, in a secluded corner of the park not far from the labs. Wu had to admit that the bungalow Hammond had built for himself was elegant, with sparse, almost Japanese lines. And the dinner had been excellent, considering the dining room wasn’t fully staffed yet.

But there was something about Hammond that Wu found troubling. The old man was different in some way … subtly different. All during dinner, Wu had tried to decide what it was. In part, a tendency to ramble, to repeat himself, to retell old stories. In part, it was an emotional liability, flaring anger one moment, maudlin sentimentality the next. But all that could be understood as a natural concomitant of age. John Hammond was, after all, almost seventy-seven.

But there was something else. A stubborn evasiveness. An insistence on having his way. And, in the end, a complete refusal to deal with the situation that now faced the park.

Wu had been stunned by the evidence (he did not yet allow himself to believe the case was proved) that the dinosaurs were breeding. After Grant had asked about amphibian DNA, Wu had intended to go directly to his laboratory and check the computer records of the various DNA assemblies. Because, if the dinosaurs were in fact breeding, then everything about Jurassic Park was called into question—their genetic development methods, their genetic control methods, everything. Even the lysine dependency might be suspect. And if these animals could truly breed, and could also survive in the wild …

Henry Wu wanted to check the data at once. But Hammond had stubbornly insisted Wu accompany him at dinner.

“Now then, Henry, you must save room for ice cream,” Hammond said, pushing back from the table. “María makes the most wonderful ginger ice cream.”

“All right” Wu looked at the beautiful, silent serving girl. His eyes followed her out of the room, and then he glanced up at the single video monitor mounted in the wall. The monitor was dark. “Your monitor’s out,” Wu said.

“Is it?” Hammond glanced over. “Must be the storm.” He reached behind him for the telephone. “I’ll just check with John in control.”

Wu could hear the static crackle on the telephone line. Hammond shrugged, and set the receiver back in its cradle. “Lines must be down,” he said. “Or maybe Nedry’s still doing data transmission. He has quite a few bugs to fix this weekend. Nedry’s a genius in his way, but we had to press him quite hard, toward the end, to make sure he got things right.”

“Perhaps I should go to the control room and check,” Wu said.

“No, no,” Hammond said. “There’s no reason. If there were any problem, we’d hear about it. Ah.”

María came back into the room, with two plates of ice cream.

“You must have just a little, Henry,” Hammond said. “It’s made with fresh ginger, from the eastern part of the island. It’s an old man’s vice, ice cream. But still …”

Dutifully, Wu dipped his spoon. Outside, lightning flashed, and there was the sharp crack of thunder. “That was close,” Wu said. “I hope the storm isn’t frightening the children.”

“I shouldn’t think so,” Hammond said. He tasted the ice cream. “But I can’t help but hold some fears about this park, Henry.”

Inwardly, Wu felt relieved. Perhaps the old man was going to face the facts, after all. “What kind of fears?”

“You know, Jurassic Park’s really made for children. The children of the world love dinosaurs, and the children are going to delight—just delight—in this place. Their little faces will shine with the joy of finally seeing these wonderful animals. But I am afraid … I may not live to see it, Henry. I may not live to see the joy on their faces.”

“I think there are other problems, too,” Wu said, frowning.

“But none so pressing on my mind as this,” Hammond said, “that I may not live to see their shining, delighted faces. This is our triumph, this park. We have done what we set out to do. And, you remember, our original intent was to use the newly emerging technology of genetic engineering to make money. A lot of money.”

Wu knew Hammond was about to launch into one of his old speeches. He held up his hand. “I’m familiar with this, John—”

“If you were going to start a bioengineering company, Henry, what would you do? Would you make products to help mankind, to fight illness and disease? Dear me, no. That’s a terrible idea. A very poor use of new technology.”

Hammond shook his head sadly. “Yet, you’ll remember,” he said, “the original genetic engineering companies, like Genentech and Cetus, were all started to make pharmaceuticals. New drugs for mankind. Noble, noble purpose. Unfortunately, drugs face all kinds of barriers. FDA testing alone takes five to eight years—if you’re lucky. Even worse, there are forces at work in the marketplace. Suppose you make a miracle drug for cancer or heart disease—as Genentech did. Suppose you now want to charge a thousand dollars or two thousand dollars a dose. You might imagine that is your privilege. After all, you invented the drug, you paid to develop and test it; you should be able to charge whatever you wish. But do you really think that the government will let you do that? No, Henry, they will not. Sick people aren’t going to pay a thousand dollars a dose for needed medication—they won’t be grateful, they’ll be outraged. Blue Cross isn’t going to pay it. They’ll scream highway robbery. So something will happen. Your patent application will be denied. Your permits will be delayed. Something will force you to see reason—and to sell your drug at a lower cost. From a business standpoint, that makes helping mankind a very risky business. Personally, I would never help mankind.”

Wu had heard the argument before. And he knew Hammond was right; some new bioengineered pharmaceuticals had indeed suffered inexplicable delays and patent problems.

“Now,” Hammond said, “think how different it is when you’re making entertainment. Nobody needs entertainment. That’s not a matter for government intervention. If I charge five thousand dollars a day for my park, who is going to stop me? After all, nobody needs to come here. And, far from being highway robbery, a costly price tag actually increases the appeal of the park. A visit becomes a status symbol, and all Americans love that. So do the Japanese, and of course they have far more money.”

Hammond finished his ice cream, and María silently took the dish away. “She’s not from here, you know,” he said. “She’s Haitian. Her mother is French. But in any case, Henry, you will recall that the original purpose behind pointing my company in this direction in the first place—was to have freedom from government intervention, anywhere in the world.”

“Speaking of the rest of the world …”

Hammond smiled. “We have already leased a large tract in the Azores, for Jurassic Park Europe. And you know we long ago obtained an island near Guam, for Jurassic Park Japan. Construction on the next two Jurassic Parks will begin early next year. They will all be open within four years. At that time, direct revenues will exceed ten billion dollars a year, and merchandising, television, and ancillary rights should double that. I see no reason to bother with children’s pets, which I’m told Lew Dodgson thinks we’re planning to make.”

“Twenty billion dollars a year,” Wu said softly, shaking his head.

“That’s speaking conservatively,” Hammond said. He smiled. “There’s no reason to speculate wildly. More ice cream, Henry?”

“Did you find him?” Arnold snapped, when the guard walked into the control room.

“No, Mr. Arnold.”

“Find him.”

“I don’t think he’s in the building, Mr. Arnold.”

“Then look in the lodge,” Arnold said, “look in the maintenance building, look in the utility shed, look everywhere, but just find him.”

“The thing is …” The guard hesitated. “Mr. Nedry’s the fat man, is that right?”

“That’s right,” Arnold said. “He’s fat. A fat slob.”

“Well, Jimmy down in the main lobby said he saw the fat man go into the garage.”

Muldoon spun around. “Into the garage? When?”

“About ten, fifteen minutes ago.”

“Jesus,” Muldoon said.

The Jeep screeched to a stop. “Sorry,” Harding said.

In the headlamps, Ellie saw a herd of apatosaurs lumbering across the road. There were six animals, each the size of a house, and a baby as large as a full-grown horse. The apatosaurs moved in unhurried silence, never looking toward the Jeep and its glowing headlamps. At one point, the baby stopped to lap water from a puddle in the road, then moved on.

A comparable herd of elephants would have been startled by the arrival of a car, would have trumpeted and circled to protect the baby. But these animals showed no fear. “Don’t they see us?” she said.

“Not exactly, no,” Harding said. “Of course, in a literal sense they do see us, but we don’t really mean anything to them. We hardly ever take cars out at night, and so they have no experience of them. We are just a strange, smelly object in their environment. Representing no threat, and therefore no interest. I’ve occasionally been out at night, visiting a sick animal, and on my way back these fellows blocked the road for an hour or more.”

“What do you do?”

Harding grinned. “Play a recorded tyrannosaur roar. That gets them moving. Not that they care much about tyrannosaurs. These apatosaurs are so big they don’t really have any predators. They can break a tyrannosaur’s neck with a swipe of their tail. And they know it. So does the tyrannosaur.”

“But they do see us. I mean, if we were to get out of the car …”

Harding shrugged. “They probably wouldn’t react. Dinosaurs have excellent visual acuity, but they have a basic amphibian visual system: it’s attuned to movement. They don’t see unmoving things well at all.”

The animals moved on, their skin glistening in the rain. Harding put the car in gear. “I think we can continue now,” he said.

Wu said, “I suspect you may find there are pressures on your park, just as there are pressures on Genentech’s drugs.” He and Hammond had moved to the living room, and they were now watching the storm lash the big glass windows.

“I can’t see how,” Hammond said.

“The scientists may wish to constrain you. Even to stop you.”

“Well, they can’t do that,” Hammond said. He shook his finger at Wu. “You know why the scientists would try to do that? It’s because they want to do research, of course. That’s all they ever want to do, is research. Not to accomplish anything. Not to make any progress. Just do research. Well, they have a surprise coming to them.”

“I wasn’t thinking of that,” Wu said.

Hammond sighed. “I’m sure it would be interesting for the scientists, to do research. But you arrive at the point where these animals are simply too expensive to be used for research. This is wonderful technology, Henry, but it’s also frightfully expensive technology. The fact is, it can only be supported as entertainment.” Hammond shrugged. “That’s just the way it is.”

“But if there are attempts to close down—”

“Face the damn facts, Henry,” Hammond said irritably. “This isn’t America. This isn’t even Costa Rica. This is my island. I own it. And nothing is going to stop me from opening Jurassic Park to all the children of the world.” He chuckled. “Or, at least, to the rich ones. And I tell you, they’ll love it.”

In the backseat of the Jeep, Ellie Sattler stared out the window. They had been driving through rain-drenched jungle for the last twenty minutes, and had seen nothing since the apatosaurs crossed the road.

“We’re near the jungle river now,” Harding said, as he drove. “It’s off there somewhere to our left.”

Abruptly he slammed on the brakes again. The car skidded to a stop in front of a flock of small green animals. “Well, you’re getting quite a show tonight,” he said. “Those are compys.”

Procompsognathids, Ellie thought, wishing that Grant were here to see them. This was the animal they had seen in the fax, back in Montana. The little dark green procompsognathids scurried to the other side of the road, then squatted on their hind legs to look at the car, chittering briefly, before hurrying onward into the night.

“Odd,” Harding said. “Wonder where they’re off to? Compys don’t usually move at night, you know. They climb up in a tree and wait for daylight.”

“Then why are they out now?” Ellie said.

“I can’t imagine. You know compys are scavengers, like buzzards. They’re attracted to a dying animal, and they have tremendously sensitive smell. They can smell a dying animal for miles.”

“Then they’re going to a dying animal?”

“Dying, or already dead.”

“Should we follow them?” Ellie said.

“I’d be curious,” Harding said. “Yes, why not? Let’s go see where they’re going.”

He turned the car around, and headed back toward the compys.

TIM

Tim Murphy lay in the Land Cruiser, his cheek pressed against the car door handle. He drifted slowly back to consciousness. He wanted only to sleep. He shifted his position, and felt the pain in his cheekbone where it lay against the metal door. His whole body ached. His arms and his legs and most of all his head—there was a terrible pounding pain in his head. All the pain made him want to go back to sleep.

He pushed himself up on one elbow, opened his eyes, and retched, vomiting all over his shirt. He tasted sour bile and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His head throbbed; he felt dizzy and seasick, as if the world were moving, as if he were rocking back and forth on a boat.

Tim groaned, and rolled onto his back, turning away from the puddle of vomit. The pain in his head made him breathe in short, shallow gasps. And he still felt sick, as if everything were moving. He opened his eyes and looked around, trying to get his bearings.

He was inside the Land Cruiser. But the car must have flipped over on its side, because he was lying on his back against the passenger door, looking up at the steering wheel and beyond, at the branches of a tree, moving in the wind. The rain had nearly stopped, but water drops still fell on him through the broken front windshield.

He stared curiously at the fragments of glass. He couldn’t remember how the windshield had broken. He couldn’t remember anything except that they had been parked on the road and he had been talking to Dr. Grant when the tyrannosaur came toward them. That was the last thing he remembered.

He felt sick again, and closed his eyes until the nausea passed. He was aware of a rhythmic creaking sound, like the rigging of a boat. Dizzy and sick to his stomach, he really felt as if the whole car were moving beneath him. But when he opened his eyes again, he saw it was true—the Land Cruiser was moving, lying on its side, swaying back and forth.

The whole car was moving.

Tentatively, Tim rose to his feet. Standing on the passenger door, he peered over the dashboard, looking out through the shattered windshield. At first he saw only dense foliage, moving in the wind. But here and there he could see gaps, and beyond the foliage, the ground was—

The ground was twenty feet below him.

He stared uncomprehendingly. The Land Cruiser was lying on its side in the branches of a large tree, twenty feet above the ground, swaying back and forth in the wind.

“Oh shit,” he said. What was he going to do? He stood on his tiptoes and peered out, trying to see better, grabbing the steering wheel for support. The wheel spun free in his hand, and with a loud crack the Land Cruiser shifted position, dropping a few feet in the branches of the tree. He looked down through the shattered glass of the passenger-door window at the ground below.

“Oh shit. Oh shit.” He kept repeating it. “Oh shit. Oh shit.”

Another loud crack—the Land Cruiser jolted down another foot

He had to get out of here.

He looked down at his feet. He was standing on the door handle. He crouched back down on his hands and knees to look at the handle. He couldn’t see very well in the dark, but he could tell that the door was dented outward so the handle couldn’t turn. He’d never get the door open. He tried to roll the window down, but the window was stuck, too. Then he thought of the back door. Maybe he could open that. He leaned over the front seat, and the Land Cruiser lurched with the shift in weight.

Carefully, Tim reached back and twisted the handle on the rear door.

It was stuck, too.

How was he going to get out?

He heard a snorting sound and looked down. A dark shape passed below him. It wasn’t the tyrannosaur. This shape was tubby and it made a kind of snuffling as it waddled along. The tail flopped back and forth, and Tim could see the long spikes.

It was the stegosaur, apparently recovered from its illness. Tim wondered where the other people were: Gennaro and Sattler and the vet. He had last seen them near the stegosaur. How long ago was that? He looked at his watch, but the face was cracked; he couldn’t see the numbers. He took the watch off and tossed it aside.

The stegosaur snuffled and moved on. Now the only sound was the wind in the trees, and the creaking of the Land Cruiser as it shifted back and forth.

He had to get out of here.

Tim grabbed the handle, tried to force it, but it was stuck solid. It wouldn’t move at all. Then he realized what was wrong: the rear door was locked! Tim pulled up the pin and twisted the handle. The rear door swung open, downward—and came to rest against the branch a few feet below.

The opening was narrow, but Tim thought he could wriggle through it. Holding his breath, he crawled slowly back into the rear seat. The Land Cruiser creaked, but held its position. Gripping the doorposts on both sides, Tim slowly lowered himself down, through the narrow angled opening of the door. Soon he was lying flat on his stomach on the slanted door, his legs sticking out of the car. He kicked in the air—his feet touched something solid—a branch—and he rested his weight on it.

As soon as he did, the branch bent down and the door swung wider, spilling him out of the Land Cruiser, and he fell—leaves scratching his face—his body bouncing from branch to branch—a jolt—searing pain, bright light in his head—

He slammed to a stop, the wind knocked from him. Tim lay doubled over a large branch, his stomach burning pain.

Tim heard another crack and looked up at the Land Cruiser, a big dark shape five feet above him.

Another crack. The car shifted.

Tim forced himself to move, to climb down. He used to like to climb trees. He was a good tree-climber. And this was a good tree to climb, the branches spaced close together, almost like a staircase.…

Crackkkk …

The car was definitely moving.

Tim scrambled downward, slipping over the wet branches, feeling sticky sap on his hands, hurrying. He had not descended more than a few feet when the Land Cruiser creaked a final time, and then slowly, very slowly, nosed over. Tim could see the big green grille and the front headlights swinging down at him, and then the Land Cruiser fell free, gaining momentum as it rushed toward him, slamming against the branch where Tim had just been—

And it stopped.

His face just inches from the dented grille, bent inward like an evil mouth, headlamps for eyes. Oil dripped on Tim’s face.

He was still twelve feet above the ground. He reached down, found another branch, and moved down. Above, he saw the branch bending under the weight of the Land Cruiser, and then it cracked, and the Land Cruiser came rushing down toward him and he knew he could never escape it, he could never get down fast enough, so Tim just let go.

He fell the rest of the way.

Tumbling, banging, feeling pain in every part of his body, hearing the Land Cruiser smashing down through the branches after him like a pursuing animal, and then Tim’s shoulder hit the soft ground, and he rolled as hard as he could, and pressed his body against the trunk of the tree as the Land Cruiser tumbled down with a loud metallic crash and a sudden hot burst of electrical sparks that stung his skin and sputtered and sizzled on the wet ground around him.

Slowly, Tim got to his feet. In the darkness he heard the snuffling, and saw the stegosaur coming back, apparently attracted by the crash of the Land Cruiser. The dinosaur moved dumbly, the low head thrust forward, and the big cartilaginous plates running in two rows along the hump of the back. It behaved like an overgrown tortoise. Stupid like that. And slow.

Tim picked up a rock and threw it.

“Get away!”

The rock thunked dully off the plates. The stegosaur kept coming.

“Go on! Go!”

He threw another rock, and hit the stegosaur in the head. The animal grunted, turned slowly away, and shuffled off in the direction it had come.

Tim leaned against the crumpled Land Cruiser and looked around in the darkness. He had to get back to the others, but he didn’t want to get lost. He knew he was somewhere in the park, probably not far from the main road. If he could only get his bearings. He couldn’t see much in the dark, but—

Then he remembered the goggles.

He climbed through the shattered front windshield into the Land Cruiser and found the night-vision goggles, and the radio. The radio was broken and silent, so he left it behind. But the goggles still worked. He flicked them on, saw the reassuringly familiar phosphorescent green image.

Wearing the goggles, he saw the battered fence off to his left, and walked toward it. The fence was twelve feet high, but the tyrannosaur had flattened it easily. Tim hurried across it, moved through an area of dense foliage, and came out onto the main road.

Through his goggles, he saw the other Land Cruiser turned on its side. He ran toward it, took a breath, and looked inside. The car was empty. No sign of Dr. Grant and Dr. Malcolm.

Where had they gone?

Where had everybody gone?

He felt sudden panic, standing alone in the jungle road at night with that empty car, and turned quickly in circles, seeing the bright green world in the goggles swirl. Something pale by the side of the road caught his eye. It was Lex’s baseball. He wiped the mud off it.

“Lex!”

Tim shouted as loud as he could, not caring if the animals heard him. He listened, but there was only the wind, and the plink of raindrops falling from the trees.

“Lex!”

He vaguely remembered that she had been in the Land Cruiser when the tyrannosaur attacked. Had she stayed there? Or had she gotten away? The events of the attack were confused in his mind. He wasn’t exactly sure what had happened. Just to think of it made him uneasy. He stood in the road, gasping with panic.

“Lex!”

The night seemed to close in around him. Feeling sorry for himself, he sat in a cold rainy puddle in the road and whimpered for a while. When he finally stopped, he still heard whimpering. It was faint, and it was coming from somewhere farther up the road.

“How long has it been?” Muldoon said, coming back into the control room. He was carrying a black metal case.

“Half an hour.”

“Harding’s Jeep should be back here by now.”

Arnold stubbed out his cigarette. “I’m sure they’ll arrive any minute now.”

“Still no sign of Nedry?” Muldoon said.

“No. Not yet.”

Muldoon opened the case, which contained six portable radios. “I’m going to distribute these to people in the building.” He handed one to Arnold. “Take the charger, too. These are our emergency radios, but nobody had them plugged in, naturally. Let it charge about twenty minutes, and then try and raise the cars.”

Henry Wu opened the door marked FERTILIZATION and entered the darkened lab. There was nobody here; apparently all the technicians were still at dinner. Wu went directly to the computer terminal and punched up the DNA logbooks. The logbooks had to be kept on computer. DNA was such a large molecule that each species required ten gigabytes of optical disk space to store details of all the iterations. He was going to have to check all fifteen species. That was a tremendous amount of information to search through.

He still wasn’t clear about why Grant thought frog DNA was important. Wu himself didn’t often distinguish one kind of DNA from another. After all, most DNA in living creatures was exactly the same. DNA was an incredibly ancient substance. Human beings, walking around in the streets of the modern world, bouncing their pink new babies, hardly stopped to think that the substance at the center of it all—the substance that began the dance of life—was a chemical almost as old as the earth itself. The DNA molecule was so old that its evolution had essentially finished more than two billion years ago. There had been little new since that time. Just a few recent combinations of the old genes—and not much of that.

When you compared the DNA of man and the DNA of a lowly bacterium, you found that only about 10 percent of the strands were different. This innate conservatism of DNA emboldened Wu to use whatever DNA he wished. In making his dinosaurs, Wu had manipulated the DNA as a sculptor might clay or marble. He had created freely.

He started the computer search program, knowing it would take two or three minutes to run. He got up and walked around the lab, checking instruments out of long-standing habit. He noted the recorder outside the freezer door, which tracked the freezer temperature. He saw there was a spike in the graph. That was odd, he thought. It meant somebody had been in the freezer. Recently, too—within the last half hour. But who would go in there at night?

The computer beeped, signaling that the first of the data searches was complete. Wu went over to see what it had found, and when he saw the screen, he forgot all about the freezer and the graph spike.

The result was clear: all breeding dinosaurs incorporated rana, or frog DNA. None of the other animals did. Wu still did not understand why this had caused them to breed. But he could no longer deny that Grant was right. The dinosaurs were breeding.

He hurried up to the control room.

LEX

She was curled up inside a big one-meter drainage pipe that ran under the road. She had her baseball glove in her mouth and she was rocking back and forth, banging her head repeatedly against the back of the pipe. It was dark in there, but he could see her clearly with his goggles. She seemed unhurt, and he felt a great burst of relief.

“Lex, it’s me. Tim.”

She didn’t answer. She continued to bang her head on the pipe.

“Come on out.”

She shook her head no. He could see she was badly frightened.

“Lex,” he said, “if you come out, I’ll let you wear these night goggles.”

She just shook her head.

“Look what I have,” he said, holding up his hand. She stared uncomprehendingly. It was probably too dark for her to see. “It’s your ball, Lex. I found your ball.”

“So what.”

He tried another approach. “It must be uncomfortable in there. Cold, too. Wouldn’t you like to come out?”

She resumed banging her head against the pipe.

“Why not?”

“There’s aminals out there.”

That threw him for a moment. She hadn’t said “aminals” for years.

“The aminals are gone,” he said.

“There’s a big one. A Tyrannosaurus rex.”

“He’s gone.”

“Where did he go?”

“I don’t know, but he’s not around here now,” Tim said, hoping it was true.

Lex didn’t move. He heard her banging again. Tim sat down in the grass outside the pipe, where she could see him. The ground was wet where he sat. He hugged his knees and waited. He couldn’t think of anything else to do. “I’m just going to sit here,” he said. “And rest.”

“Is Daddy out there?”

“No,” he said, feeling strange. “He’s back at home, Lex.”

“Is Mommy?”

“No, Lex.”

“Are there any grown-ups out there?” Lex said.

“Not yet. But I’m sure they’ll come soon. They’re probably on their way right now.”

Then he heard her moving inside the pipe, and she came out. Shivering with cold, and with dried blood on her forehead, but otherwise all right.

She looked around in surprise and said, “Where’s Dr. Grant?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, he was here before.”

“He was? When?”

“Before,” Lex said. “I saw him when I was in the pipe.”

“Where’d he go?”

“How am I supposed to know?” Lex said, wrinkling her nose. She began to shout: “Hellooo. Hell-oooo! Dr. Grant? Dr. Grant!”

Tim was uneasy at the noise she was making—it might bring back the tyrannosaur—but a moment later he heard an answering shout. It was coming from the right, over toward the Land Cruiser that Tim had left a few minutes before. With his goggles, Tim saw with relief that Dr. Grant was walking toward them. He had a big tear in his shirt at the shoulder, but otherwise he looked okay.

“Thank God,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

Shivering, Ed Regis got to his feet, and wiped the cold mud off his face and hands. He had spent a very bad half hour, wedged among big boulders on the slope of a hill below the road. He knew it wasn’t much of a hiding place, but he was panicked and he wasn’t thinking clearly. He had lain in this muddy cold place and he had tried to get hold of himself, but he kept seeing that dinosaur in his mind. That dinosaur coming toward him. Toward the car.

Ed Regis didn’t remember exactly what had happened after that. He remembered that Lex had said something but he hadn’t stopped, he couldn’t stop, he had just kept running and running. Beyond the road he had lost his footing and tumbled down the hill and come to rest by some boulders, and it had seemed to him that he could crawl in among the boulders, and hide, there was enough room, so that was what he had done. Gasping and terrified, thinking of nothing except to get away from the tyrannosaur. And, finally, when he was wedged in there like a rat between the boulders, he had calmed down a little, and he had been overcome with horror and shame because he’d abandoned those kids, he had just run away, he had just saved himself. He knew he should go back up to the road, he should try to rescue them, because he had always imagined himself as brave and cool under pressure, but whenever he tried to get control of himself, to make himself go back up there—somehow he just couldn’t. He started to feel panicky, and he had trouble breathing, and he didn’t move.

He told himself it was hopeless, anyway. If the kids were still up there on the road they could never survive, and certainly there was nothing Ed Regis could do for them, and he might as well stay where he was. No one was going to know what had happened except him. And there was nothing he could do. Nothing he could have done. And so Regis had remained among the boulders for half an hour, fighting off panic, carefully not thinking about whether the kids had died, or about what Hammond would have to say when he found out.

What finally made him move was the peculiar sensation he noticed in his mouth. The side of his mouth felt funny, kind of numb and tingling, and he wondered if he had hurt it during the fall. Regis touched his face and felt swollen flesh on the side of his mouth. It was funny, but it didn’t hurt at all. Then he realized the swollen flesh was a leech growing fat as it sucked his lips. It was practically in his mouth. Shivering with nausea, Regis pulled the leech away, feeling it tear from the flesh of his lips, feeling the gush of warm blood in his mouth. He spat, and flung it with disgust into the forest. He saw another leech on his forearm, and pulled it off, leaving a dark bloody streak behind. Jesus, he was probably covered with them. That fall down the hillside. These jungle hills were full of leeches. So were the dark rocky crevices. What did the workmen say? The leeches crawled up your underwear. They liked dark warm places. They liked to crawl right up your—

“Hellooo!”

He stopped. It was a voice, carried by the wind.

“Hello! Dr. Grant!”

Jesus, that was the little girl.

Ed Regis listened to the tone of her voice. She didn’t sound frightened, or in pain. She was just calling in her insistent way. And it slowly dawned on him that something else must have happened, that the tyrannosaur must have gone away—or at least hadn’t attacked— and that the other people might still be alive. Grant and Malcolm. Everybody might be alive. And the realization made him pull himself together in an instant, the way you got sober in an instant when the cops pulled you over, and he felt better, because now he knew what he had to do. And as he crawled out from the boulders he was already formulating the next step, already figuring out what he would say, how to handle things from this point.

Regis wiped the cold mud off his face and hands, the evidence that he had been hiding. He wasn’t embarrassed that he had been hiding, but now he had to take charge. He scrambled back up toward the road, but when he emerged from the foliage he had a moment of disorientation. He didn’t see the cars at all. He was somehow at the bottom of the hill. The Land Cruisers must be at the top.

He started walking up the hill, back toward the Land Cruisers. It was very quiet. His feet splashed in the muddy puddles. He couldn’t hear the little girl any more. Why had she stopped calling? As he walked, he began to think that maybe something had happened to her. In that case, he shouldn’t walk back there. Maybe the tyrannosaur was still hanging around. Here he was, already at the bottom of the hill. That much closer to home.

And it was so quiet. Spooky, it was so quiet.

Ed Regis turned around, and started walking back toward the camp.

Alan Grant ran his hands over her limbs, squeezing the arms and legs briefly. She didn’t seem to have any pain. It was amazing: aside from a cut on her head, she was fine. “I told you I was,” she said.

“Well, I had to check.”

The boy was not quite so fortunate. Tim’s nose was swollen and painful; Grant suspected it was broken. His right shoulder was badly bruised and swollen. But his legs seemed to be all right. Both kids could walk. That was the important thing.

Grant himself was all right except for a claw abrasion down his right chest, where the tyrannosaur had kicked him. It burned with every breath, but it didn’t seem to be serious, and it didn’t limit his movement.

He wondered if he had been knocked unconscious, because he had only dim recollections of events immediately preceding the moment he had sat up, groaning, in the woods ten yards from the Land Cruiser. At first his chest had been bleeding, so he had stuck leaves on the wound, and after a while it clotted. Then he had started walking around, looking for Malcolm and the kids. Grant couldn’t believe he was still alive, and as scattered images began to come back to him, he tried to make sense of them. The tyrannosaur should have killed them all easily. Why hadn’t it?

“I’m hungry,” Lex said.

“Me, too,” Grant said. “We’ve got to get ourselves back to civilization. And we’ve got to tell them about the ship.”

“We’re the only ones who know?” Tim said.

“Yes. We’ve got to get back and tell them.”

“Then let’s walk down the road toward the hotel,” Tim said, pointing down the hill. “That way we’ll meet them when they come for us.”

Grant considered that. And he kept thinking about one thing: the dark shape that had crossed between the Land Cruisers even before the attack started. What animal had that been? He could think of only one possibility: the little tyrannosaur.

“I don’t think so, Tim. The road has high fences on both sides,” Grant said. “If one of the tyrannosaurs is farther down on the road, we’ll be trapped.”

“Then should we wait here?” Tim said.

“Yes,” Grant said. “Let’s just wait here until someone comes.”

“I’m hungry,” Lex said.

“I hope it won’t be very long,” Grant said.

“I don’t want to stay here,” Lex said.

Then, from the bottom of the hill, they heard the sound of a man coughing.

“Stay here,” Grant said. He ran forward, to look down the hill.

“Stay here,” Tim said, and he ran forward after him.

Lex followed her brother. “Don’t leave me, don’t leave me here, you guys—”

Grant clapped his hand over her mouth. She struggled to protest. He shook his head, and pointed over the hill, for her to look.

At the bottom of the hill, Grant saw Ed Regis, standing rigid, unmoving. The forest around them had become deadly silent. The steady background drone of cicadas and frogs had ceased abruptly. There was only the faint rustle of leaves, and the whine of the wind.

Lex started to speak, but Grant pulled her against the trunk of the nearest tree, ducking down among the heavy gnarled roots at the base. Tim came in right after them. Grant put his hands to his lips, signaling them to be quiet, and then he slowly looked around the tree.

The road below was dark, and as the branches of the big trees moved in the wind, the moonlight filtering through made a dappled, shifting pattern. Ed Regis was gone. It took Grant a moment to locate him. The publicist was pressed up against the trunk of a big tree, hugging it. Regis wasn’t moving at all.

The forest remained silent.

Lex tugged impatiently at Grant’s shirt; she wanted to know what was happening. Then, from somewhere very near, they heard a soft snorting exhalation, hardly louder than the wind. Lex heard it, too, because she stopped struggling.

The sound floated toward them again, soft as a sigh. Grant thought it was almost like the breathing of a horse.

Grant looked at Regis, and saw the moving shadows cast by the moonlight on the trunk of the tree. And then Grant realized there was another shadow, superimposed on the others, but not moving: a strong curved neck, and a square head.

The exhalation came again.

Tim leaned forward cautiously, to look. Lex did, too.

They heard a crack as a branch broke, and into the path stepped a tyrannosaur. It was the juvenile: about eight feet tall, and it moved with the clumsy gait of a young animal, almost like a puppy. The juvenile tyrannosaur shuffled down the path, stopping with every step to sniff the air before moving on. It passed the tree where Regis was hiding, and gave no indication that it had seen him. Grant saw Regis’s body relax slightly. Regis turned his head, trying to watch the tyrannosaur on the far side of the tree.

The tyrannosaur was now out of view down the road. Regis started to relax, releasing his grip on the tree. But the jungle remained silent. Regis remained close to the tree trunk for another half a minute. Then the sounds of the forest returned: the first tentative croak of a tree frog, the buzz of one cicada, and then the full chorus. Regis stepped away from the tree, shaking his shoulders, releasing the tension. He walked into the middle of the road, looking in the direction of the departed tyrannosaur.

The attack came from the left.

The juvenile roared as it swung its head forward, knocking Regis flat to the ground. He yelled and scrambled to his feet, but the tyrannosaur pounced, and it must have pinned him with its hind leg, because suddenly Regis wasn’t moving, he was sitting up in the path shouting at the dinosaur and waving his hands at it, as if he could scare it off. The young dinosaur seemed perplexed by the sounds and movement coming from its tiny prey. The juvenile bent its head over, sniffing curiously, and Regis pounded on the snout with his fists.

“Get away! Back off! Go on, back off!” Regis was shouting at the top of his lungs, and the dinosaur backed away, allowing Regis to get to his feet. Regis was shouting “Yeah! You heard me! Back off! Get away!” as he moved away from the dinosaur. The juvenile continued to stare curiously at the odd, noisy little animal before it, but when Regis had gone a few paces, it lunged and knocked him down again.

It’s playing with him, Grant thought.

“Hey!” Regis shouted as he fell, but the juvenile did not pursue him, allowing him to get to his feet. He jumped to his feet, and continued backing away. “You stupid—back! Back! You heard me—back!” he shouted like a lion tamer.

The juvenile roared, but it did not attack, and Regis now edged toward the trees and high foliage to the right. In another few steps he would be in hiding. “Back! You! Back!” Regis shouted, and then, at the last moment, the juvenile pounced, and knocked Regis flat on his back. “Cut that out!” Regis yelled, and the juvenile ducked his head, and Regis began to scream. No words, just a high-pitched scream.

The scream cut off abruptly, and when the juvenile lifted his head, Grant saw ragged flesh in his jaws.

“Oh no,” Lex said, softly. Beside her, Tim had turned away, suddenly nauseated. His night-vision goggles slipped from his forehead and landed on the ground with a metallic clink.

The juvenile’s head snapped up, and it looked toward the top of the hill.

Tim picked up his goggles as Grant grabbed both the children’s hands and began to run.

CONTROL

In the night, the compys scurried along the side of the road. Harding’s Jeep followed a short distance behind. Ellie pointed farther up the road. “Is that a light?”

“Could be,” Harding said. “Looks almost like headlights.”

The radio suddenly hummed and crackled. They heard John Arnold say, “—you there?”

“Ah, there he is,” Harding said. “Finally.” He pressed the button. “Yes, John, we’re here. We’re near the river, following the compys. It’s quite interesting.”

More crackling. Then: “—eed your car—”

“What’d he say?” Gennaro said.

“Something about a car,” Ellie said. At Grant’s dig in Montana, Ellie was the one who operated the radiophone. After years of experience, she had become skilled at picking up garbled transmissions. “I think he said he needs your car.”

Harding pressed the button. “John? Are you there? We can’t read you very well. John?”

There was a flash of lightning, followed by a long sizzle of radio static, then Arnold’s tense voice. “—where are—ou—”

“We’re one mile north of the hypsy paddock. Near the river, following some compys.”

“No—damn well—get back here—ow!”

“Sounds like he’s got a problem,” Ellie said, frowning. There was no mistaking the tension in the voice. “Maybe we should go back.”

Harding shrugged. “John’s frequently got a problem. You know how engineers are. They want everything to go by the book.” He pressed the button on the radio. “John? Say again, please.…”

More crackling.

More static. The loud crash of lightning. Then: “—Muldoo—need your car—ow—”

Gennaro frowned. “Is he saying Muldoon needs our car?”

“That’s what it sounded like,” Ellie said.

“Well, that doesn’t make any sense,” Harding said.

“—other—stuck—Muldoon wants—car—”

“I get it,” Ellie said. “The other cars are stuck on the road in the storm, and Muldoon wants to go get them.”

Harding shrugged. “Why doesn’t Muldoon take the other car?” He pushed the radio button. “John? Tell Muldoon to take the other car. It’s in the garage.”

The radio crackled. “—not—listen—crazy bastards—car—”

Harding pressed the radio button. “I said, it’s in the garage, John. The car is in the garage.”

More static. “—edry has—ssing—one—”

“I’m afraid this isn’t getting us anywhere,” Harding said. “All right, John. We’re coming in now.” He turned the radio off, and turned the car around. “I just wish I understood what the urgency is.”

Harding put the Jeep in gear, and they rumbled down the road in the darkness. It was another ten minutes before they saw the welcoming lights of the Safari Lodge. And as Harding pulled to a stop in front of the visitor center, they saw Muldoon coming toward them. He was shouting, and waving his arms.

“God damn it, Arnold, you son of a bitch! God damn it, get this park back on track! Now! Get my grandkids back here! Now!” John Hammond stood in the control room, screaming and stamping his little feet. He had been carrying on this way for the last two minutes, while Henry Wu stood in the corner, looking stunned.

“Well, Mr. Hammond,” Arnold said, “Muldoon’s on his way out right now, to do exactly that.” Arnold turned away, and lit another cigarette. Hammond was like every other management guy Arnold had ever seen. Whether it was Disney or the Navy, management guys always behaved the same. They never understood the technical issues; and they thought that screaming was the way to make things happen. And maybe it was, if you were shouting at your secretaries to get you a limousine.

But screaming didn’t make any difference at all to the problems that Arnold now faced. The computer didn’t care if it was screamed at. The power network didn’t care if it was screamed at. Technical systems were completely indifferent to all this explosive human emotion. If anything, screaming was counterproductive, because Arnold now faced the virtual certainty that Nedry wasn’t coming back, which meant that Arnold himself had to go into the computer code and try and figure out what had gone wrong. It was going to be a painstaking job; he’d need to be calm and careful.

“Why don’t you go downstairs to the cafeteria,” Arnold said, “and get a cup of coffee? We’ll call you when we have more news.”

“I don’t want a Malcolm Effect here,” Hammond said.

“Don’t worry about a Malcolm Effect,” Arnold said. “Will you let me go to work?”

“God damn you,” Hammond said.

“I’ll call you, sir, when I have news from Muldoon,” Arnold said.

He pushed buttons on his console, and saw the familiar control screens change.

*/Jurassic Park Main Modules/

*/ Call Libs

Include: biostat.sys

Include: sysrom.vst

Include: net.sys

Include: pwr.mdl

*/Initialize

SetMain [42]2002/9A{total CoreSysop %4 [vig. 7*tty]}

if ValidMeter(mH) (**mH). MeterVis return

Term Call 909 c.lev {void MeterVis $303} Random(3#*MaxFid)

on SetSystem(!Dn) set shp_val.obj to lim(Val{d}SumVal

if SetMeter(mH) (**mH). ValdidMeter(Vdd) return

on SetSystem(!Telcom) set mxcpl.obj to lim(Val{pd})NextVal

Arnold was no longer operating the computer. He had now gone behind the scenes to look at the code—the line-by-line instructions that told the computer how to behave. Arnold was unhappily aware that the complete Jurassic Park program contained more than half a million lines of code, most of it undocumented, without explanation.

Wu came forward. “What are you doing, John?”

“Checking the code.”

“By inspection? That’ll take forever.”

“Tell me,” Arnold said. “Tell me.”

THE ROAD

Muldoon took the curve very fast, the Jeep sliding on the mud. Sitting beside him, Gennaro clenched his fists. They were racing along the cliff road, high above the river, now hidden below them in darkness. Muldoon accelerated forward. His face was tense.

“How much farther?” Gennaro said.

“Two, maybe three miles.”

Ellie and Harding were back at the visitor center. Gennaro had offered to accompany Muldoon. The car swerved. “It’s been an hour,” Muldoon said. “An hour, with no word from the other cars.”

“But they have radios,” Gennaro said.

“We haven’t been able to raise them,” Muldoon said.

Gennaro frowned. “If I was sitting in a car for an hour in the rain, I’d sure try to use the radio to call for somebody.”

“So would I,” Muldoon said.

Gennaro shook his head. “You really think something could have happened to them?”

“Chances are,” Muldoon said, “that they’re perfectly fine, but I’ll be happier when I finally see them. Should be any minute now.”

The road curved, and then ran up a hill. At the base of the hill Gennaro saw something white, lying among the ferns by the side of the road. “Hold it,” Gennaro said, and Muldoon braked. Gennaro jumped out and ran forward in the headlights of the Jeep to see what it was. It looked like a piece of clothing, but there was—

Gennaro stopped.

Even from six feet away, he could see clearly what it was. He walked forward more slowly.

Muldoon leaned out of the car and said, “What is it?”

“It’s a leg,” Gennaro said.

The flesh of the leg was pale blue-white, terminating in a ragged bloody stump where the knee had been. Below the calf he saw a white sock, and a brown slip-on shoe. It was the kind of shoe Ed Regis had been wearing.

By then Muldoon was out of the car, running past him to crouch over the leg. “Jesus.” He lifted the leg out of the foliage, raising it into the light of the headlamps, and blood from the stump gushed down over his hand. Gennaro was still three feet away. He quickly bent over, put his hands on his knees, squeezed his eyes shut, and breathed deeply, trying not to be sick.

“Gennaro.” Muldoon’s voice was sharp.

“What?”

“Move. You’re blocking the light.”

Gennaro took a breath, and moved. When he opened his eyes he saw Muldoon peering critically at the stump. “Torn at the joint line,” Muldoon said. “Didn’t bite it—twisted and ripped it. Just ripped his leg off.” Muldoon stood up, holding the severed leg upside down so the remaining blood dripped onto the ferns. His bloody hand smudged the white sock as he gripped the ankle. Gennaro felt sick again.

“No question what happened,” Muldoon was saying. “The T-rex got him.” Muldoon looked up the hill, then back to Gennaro. “You all right? Can you go on?”

“Yes,” Gennaro said. “I can go on.”

Muldoon was walking back toward the Jeep, carrying the leg. “I guess we better bring this along,” he said. “Doesn’t seem right to leave it here. Christ, it’s going to make a mess of the car. See if there’s anything in the back, will you? A tarp or newspaper …”

Gennaro opened the back door and rummaged around in the space behind the rear seat. He felt grateful to think about something else for a moment. The problem of how to wrap the severed leg expanded to fill his mind, crowding out all other thoughts. He found a canvas bag with a tool kit, a wheel rim, a cardboard box, and—

“Two tarps,” he said. They were neatly folded plastic.

“Give me one,” Muldoon said, still standing outside the car. Muldoon wrapped the leg and passed the now shapeless bundle to Gennaro. Holding it in his hand, Gennaro was surprised at how heavy it felt. “Just put it in the back,” Muldoon said. “If there’s a way to wedge it, you know, so it doesn’t roll around …”

“Okay.” Gennaro put the bundle in the back, and Muldoon got behind the wheel. He accelerated, the wheels spinning in the mud, then digging in. The Jeep rushed up the hill, and for a moment at the top the headlights still pointed upward into the foliage, and then they swung down, and Gennaro could see the road before them.

“Jesus,” Muldoon said.

Gennaro saw a single Land Cruiser, lying on its side in the center of the road. He couldn’t see the second Land Cruiser at all. “Where’s the other car?”

Muldoon looked around briefly, pointed to the left. “There.” The second Land Cruiser was twenty feet away, crumpled at the foot of a tree.

“What’s it doing there?”

“The T-rex threw it.”

“Threw it?” Gennaro said.

Muldoon’s face was grim. “Let’s get this over with,” he said, climbing out of the Jeep. They hurried forward to the second Land Cruiser. Their flashlights swung back and forth in the night.

As they came closer, Gennaro saw how battered the car was. He was careful to let Muldoon look inside first.

“I wouldn’t worry,” Muldoon said. “It’s very unlikely we’ll find anyone.”

“No?”

“No,” he said. He explained that, during his years in Africa, he had visited the scenes of a half-dozen animal attacks on humans in the bush. One leopard attack: the leopard had torn open a tent in the night and taken a three-year-old child. Then one buffalo attack in Amboseli; two lion attacks; one croc attack in the north, near Meru. In every case, there was surprisingly little evidence left behind.

Inexperienced people imagined horrific proofs of an animal attack—torn limbs left behind in the tent, trails of dripping blood leading away into the bush, bloodstained clothing not far from the campsite. But the truth was, there was usually nothing at all, particularly if the victim was small, an infant or a young child. The person just seemed to disappear, as if he had walked out into the bush and never come back. A predator could kill a child just by shaking it, snapping the neck. Usually there wasn’t any blood.

And most of the time you never found any other remains of the victims. Sometimes a button from a shirt, or a sliver of rubber from a shoe. But most of the time, nothing.

Predators took children—they preferred children—and they left nothing behind. So Muldoon thought it highly unlikely that they would ever find any remains of the children.

But as he looked in now, he had a surprise.

“I’ll be damned,” he said.

Muldoon tried to put the scene together. The front windshield of the Land Cruiser was shattered, but there wasn’t much glass nearby. He had noticed shards of glass back on the road. So the windshield must have broken back there, before the tyrannosaur picked the car up and threw it here. But the car had taken a tremendous beating. Muldoon shone his light inside.

“Empty?” Gennaro said, tensely.

“Not quite,” Muldoon said. His flashlight glinted off a crushed radio handset, and on the floor of the car he saw something else, something curved and black. The front doors were dented and jammed shut, but he climbed in through the back door and crawled over the seat to pick up the black object.

“It’s a watch,” he said, peering at it in the beam of his flashlight. A cheap digital watch with a molded black rubber strap. The LCD face was shattered. He thought the boy might have been wearing it, though he wasn’t sure. But it was the kind of watch a kid would have.

“What is it, a watch?” Gennaro said.

“Yes. And there’s a radio, but it’s broken.”

“Is that significant?”

“Yes. And there’s something else.…” Muldoon sniffed. There was a sour odor inside the car. He shone the light around until he saw the vomit dripping off the side door panel. He touched it: still fresh. “One of the kids may still be alive,” Muldoon said.

Gennaro squinted at him. “What makes you think so?”

“The watch,” Muldoon said. “The watch proves it.” He handed the watch to Gennaro, who held it in the glow of the flashlight, and turned it over in his hands.

“Crystal is cracked,” Gennaro said.

“That’s right,” Muldoon said. “And the band is uninjured.”

“Which means?”

“The kid took it off.”

“That could have happened anytime,” Gennaro said. “Anytime before the attack.”

“No,” Muldoon said. “Those LCD crystals are tough. It takes a powerful blow to break them. The watch face was shattered during the attack.”

“So the kid took his watch off.”

“Think about it,” Muldoon said. “If you were being attacked by a tyrannosaur, would you stop to take your watch off?”

“Maybe it was torn off.”

“It’s almost impossible to tear a watch off somebody’s wrist, without tearing the hand off, too. Anyway, the band is intact. No,” Muldoon said. “The kid took it off himself. He looked at his watch, saw it was broken, and took it off. He had the time to do that.”

“When?”

“It could only have been after the attack,” Muldoon said. “The kid must have been in this car, after the attack. And the radio was broken, so he left it behind, too. He’s a bright kid, and he knew they weren’t useful.”

“If he’s so bright,” Gennaro said, “where’d he go? Because I’d stay right here and wait to be picked up.”

“Yes,” Muldoon said. “But perhaps he couldn’t stay here. Maybe the tyrannosaur came back. Or some other animal. Anyway, something made him leave.”

“Then where’d he go?” Gennaro said.

“Let’s see if we can determine that,” Muldoon said, and he strode off toward the main road.

Gennaro watched Muldoon peering at the ground with his flashlight. His face was just inches from the mud, intent on his search. Muldoon really believed he was on to something, that at least one of the kids was still alive. Gennaro remained unimpressed. The shock of finding the severed leg had left him with a grim determination to close the park, and destroy it. No matter what Muldoon said, Gennaro suspected him of unwarranted enthusiasm, and hopefulness, and—

“You notice these prints?” Muldoon asked, still looking at the ground.

“What prints?” Gennaro said.

“These footprints—see them, coming toward us from up the road?—and they’re adult-size prints. Some kind of rubber-sole shoe. Notice the distinctive tread pattern.…”

Gennaro saw only mud. Puddles catching the light from the flashlights.

“You can see,” Muldoon continued, “the adult prints come to here, where they’re joined by other prints. Small, and medium-size … moving around in circles, overlapping … almost as if they’re standing together, talking.… But now here they are, they seem to be running.…” He pointed off. “There. Into the park.”

Gennaro shook his head. “You can see whatever you want in this mud.”

Muldoon got to his feet and stepped back. He looked down at the ground and sighed. “Say what you like, I’ll wager one of the kids survived. And maybe both. Perhaps even an adult as well, if these big prints belong to someone other than Regis. We’ve got to search the park.”

“Tonight?” Gennaro said.

But Muldoon wasn’t listening. He had walked away, toward an embankment of soft earth, near a drainpipe for rain. He crouched again. “What was that little girl wearing?”

“Christ,” Gennaro said. “I don’t know.”

Proceeding slowly, Muldoon moved farther toward the side of the road. And then they heard a wheezing sound. It was definitely an animal sound.

“Listen,” Gennaro said, feeling panic, “I think we better—”

“Shhh,” Muldoon said.

He paused, listening.

“It’s just the wind,” Gennaro said.

They heard the wheezing again, distinctly this time. It wasn’t the wind. It was coming from the foliage directly ahead of him, by the side of the road. It didn’t sound like an animal, but Muldoon moved forward cautiously. He waggled his light and shouted, but the wheezing did not change character. Muldoon pushed aside the fronds of a palm.

“What is it?” Gennaro said.

“It’s Malcolm,” Muldoon said.

Ian Malcolm lay on his back, his skin gray-white, mouth slackly open. His breath came in wheezing gasps. Muldoon handed the flashlight to Gennaro, and then bent to examine the body. “I can’t find the injury,” he said. “Head okay, chest, arms …”

Then Gennaro shone the light on the legs. “He put a tourniquet on.” Malcolm’s belt was twisted tight over the right thigh. Gennaro moved the light down the leg. The right ankle was bent outward at an awkward angle from the leg, the trousers flattened, soaked in blood. Muldoon touched the ankle gently, and Malcolm groaned.

Muldoon stepped back and tried to decide what to do next. Malcolm might have other injuries. His back might be broken. It might kill him to move him. But if they left him here, he would die of shock. It was only because he had had the presence of mind to put a tourniquet on that he hadn’t already bled to death. And probably he was doomed. They might as well move him.

Gennaro helped Muldoon pick the man up, hoisting him awkwardly over their shoulders. Malcolm moaned, and breathed in ragged gasps. “Lex,” he said. “Lex … went … Lex …”

“Who’s Lex?” Muldoon said.

“The little girl,” Gennaro said.

They carried Malcolm back to the Jeep, and wrested him into the backseat. Gennaro tightened the tourniquet around his leg. Malcolm groaned again. Muldoon slid the trouser cuff up and saw the pulpy flesh beneath, the dull white splinters of protruding bone. “We’ve got to get him back,” Muldoon said.

“You going to leave here without the kids?” Gennaro said.

“If they went into the park, it’s twenty square miles,” Muldoon said, shaking his head. “The only way we can find anything out there is with the motion sensors. If the kids are alive and moving around, the motion sensors will pick them up, and we can go right to them and bring them back. But if we don’t take Dr. Malcolm back right now, he’ll die.”

“Then we have to go back,” Gennaro said.

“Yes, I think so.”

They climbed into the car. Gennaro said, “Are you going to tell Hammond the kids are missing?”

“No,” Muldoon said. “You are.”

CONTROL

Donald Gennaro stared at Hammond, sitting in the deserted cafeteria. The man was spooning ice cream, calmly eating it. “So Muldoon believes the children are somewhere in the park?”

“He thinks so, yes.”

“Then I’m sure we’ll find them.”

“I hope so,” Gennaro said. He watched the old man deliberately eating, and he felt a chill.

“Oh, I am sure we’ll find them. After all, I keep telling everyone, this park is made for kids.”

Gennaro said, “Just so you understand that they’re missing, sir.”

“Missing?” he snapped. “Of course I know they’re missing. I’m not senile.” He sighed, and changed tone again. “Look, Donald,” Hammond said. “Let’s not get carried away. We’ve had a little breakdown from the storm or whatever, and as a result we’ve suffered a regrettable, unfortunate accident. And that’s all that’s happened. We’re dealing with it. Arnold will get the computers cleaned up. Muldoon will pick up the kids, and I have no doubt he’ll be back with them by the time we finish this ice cream. So let’s just wait and see what develops, shall we?”

“Whatever you say, sir,” Gennaro said.

“Why?” Henry Wu said, looking at the console screen.

“Because I think Nedry did something to the code,” Arnold said. “That’s why I’m checking it.”

“All right,” Wu said. “But have you tried your options?”

“Like what?” Arnold said.

“I don’t know. Aren’t the safety systems still running?” Wu said. “Keychecks? All that?”

“Jesus,” Arnold said, snapping his fingers. “They must be. Safety systems can’t be turned off except at the main panel.”

“Well,” Wu said, “if Keychecks is active, you can trace what he did.”

“I sure as hell can,” Arnold said. He started to press buttons. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? It was so obvious. The computer system at Jurassic Park had several tiers of safety systems built into it. One of them was a keycheck program, which monitored all the keystrokes entered by operators with access to the system. It was originally installed as a debugging device, but it was retained for its security value.

In a moment, all the keystrokes that Nedry had entered into the computer earlier in the day were listed in a window on the screen:

13,42,121,32,88,77,19,13,122,13,44,52,77,90,13,99,13,100,13,109,55,103 144,13,99,87,60,13,44,12,09,13,43,63,13,46,57,89,103,122,13,44,52,88,9 31,13,21,13,57,98,100,102,103,13,112,13,146,13,13,13,77,67,88,23,13,13

system

nedry

goto command level

nedry

040/#xy/67&

mr goodbytes

security

keycheck off

safety off

sl off

security

whte_rbt.obj

“That’s it?” Arnold said. “He was screwing around here for hours, it seemed like.”

“Probably just killing time,” Wu said. “Until he finally decided to get down to it.”

The initial list of numbers represented the ASCII keyboard codes for the keys Nedry had pushed at his console. Those numbers meant he was still within the standard user interface, like any ordinary user of the computer. So initially Nedry was just looking around, which you wouldn’t have expected of the programmer who had designed the system.

“Maybe he was trying to see if there were changes, before he went in,” Wu said.

“Maybe,” Arnold said. Arnold was now looking at the list of commands, which allowed him to follow Nedry’s progression through the system, line by line. “At least we can see what he did.”

system was Nedry’s request to leave the ordinary user interface and access the code itself. The computer asked for his name, and he replied: nedry. That name was authorized to access the code, so the computer allowed him into the system. Nedry asked to goto command level, the computer’s highest level of control. The command level required extra security, and asked Nedry for his name, access number, and password.

nedry

040/#xy/67&

mr goodbytes

Those entries got Nedry into the command level. From there he wanted security. And since he was authorized, the computer allowed him to go there. Once at the security level, Nedry tried three variations:

keycheck off

safety off

sl off

“He’s trying to turn off the safety systems,” Wu said. “He doesn’t want anybody to see what he’s about to do.”

“Exactly,” Arnold said. “And apparently he doesn’t know it’s no longer possible to turn the systems off except by manually flipping switches on the main board.”

After three failed commands, the computer automatically began to worry about Nedry. But since he had gotten in with proper authorization, the computer would assume that Nedry was lost, trying to do something he couldn’t accomplish from where he was. So the computer asked him again where he wanted to be, and Nedry said:

security. And he was allowed to remain there.

“Finally,” Wu said, “here’s the kicker.” He pointed to the last of the commands Nedry had entered.

whte_rbt.obj

“What the hell is that?” Arnold said. “White rabbit? Is that supposed to be his private joke?”

“It’s marked as an object,” Wu said. In computer terminology, an “object” was a block of code that could be moved around and used, the way you might move a chair in a room. An object might be a set of commands to draw a picture, or to refresh the screen, or to perform a certain calculation.

“Let’s see where it is in the code,” Arnold said. “Maybe we can figure out what it does.” He went to the program utilities and typed:

FIND WHTE_RBT.OBJ

The computer flashed back:

OBJECT NOT FOUND IN LIBRARIES

“It doesn’t exist,” Arnold said.

“Then search the code listing,” Wu said.

Arnold typed:

FIND/LISTINGS: WHTE_RBT.OBJ

The screen scrolled rapidly, the lines of code blurring as they swept past. It continued this way for almost a minute, and then abruptly stopped.

“There it is,” Wu said. “It’s not an object, it’s a command.”

The screen showed an arrow pointing to a single line of code:

curV = GetHandl {ssm.dt} tempRgn {itm.dd2}.

curH = GetHandl {ssd.itl} tempRgn2 {itm.dd4}.

on DrawMeter(!gN) set shp_val.obj to lim(Val{d})-Xval.

if ValidMeter(mH) (**mH). MeterVis return.

if Meterhandl(vGT) ((DrawBack(tY)) return.

limitDat.4 = maxBits (%33) to {limit .04} set on.

limitDat.5 = setzero, setfive, 0 {limit .2-var(szh)}.

→ on whte_rbt.obj call link.sst {security, perimeter} set to off.

vertRange = {maxRange+setlim} tempVgn(fdn-&bb+$404).

horRange = {maxRange-setlim/2} tempHgn(fdn-&dd+$105).

void DrawMeter send_screen.obj print.

“Son of a bitch,” Arnold said.

Wu shook his head. “It isn’t a bug in the code at all.”

“No,” Arnold said. “It’s a trap door. The fat bastard put in what looked like an object call, but it’s actually a command that links the security and perimeter systems and then turns them off. Gives him complete access to every place in the park.”

“Then we must be able to turn them back on,” Wu said.

“Yeah, we must.” Arnold frowned at the screen. “All we have to do is figure out the command. I’ll run an execution trace on the link,” he said. “We’ll see where that gets us.”

Wu got up from his chair. “Meanwhile,” he said, “meanwhile, that somebody went into the freezer about an hour ago. I think I better go count my embryos.”

Ellie was in her room, about to change out of her wet clothes, when there was a knock on the door.

“Alan?” she said, but when she opened the door she saw Muldoon standing there, with a plastic-wrapped package under his arm. Muldoon was also soaking wet, and there were streaks of dirt on his clothes.

“I’m sorry, but we need your help,” Muldoon said briskly. “The Land Cruisers were attacked an hour ago. We brought Malcolm back, but he’s in shock. He’s got a very bad injury to his leg. He’s still unconscious, but I put him in the bed in his room. Harding is on his way over.”

“Harding?” she said. “What about the others?”

“We haven’t found the others yet, Dr. Sattler,” Muldoon said. He was speaking slowly now.

“Oh, my God.”

“But we think that Dr. Grant and the children are still alive. We think they went into the park, Dr. Sattler.”

“Went into the park?”

“We think so. Meanwhile, Malcolm needs help. I’ve called Harding.”

“Shouldn’t you call the doctor?”

“There’s no doctor on the island. Harding’s the best we have.”

“But surely you can call for a doctor—” she said.

“No.” Muldoon shook his head. “Phone lines are down. We can’t call out.” He shifted the package in his arm.

“What’s that?” she said.

“Nothing. Just go to Malcolm’s room, and help Harding, if you will.”

And Muldoon was gone.

She sat on her bed, shocked. Ellie Sattler was not a woman disposed to unnecessary panic, and she had known Grant to get out of dangerous situations before. Once he’d been lost in the badlands for four days when a cliff gave way beneath him and his truck fell a hundred feet into a ravine. Grant’s right leg was broken. He had no water. But he walked back on a broken leg.

On the other hand, the kids …

She shook her head, pushing the thought away. The kids were probably with Grant. And if Grant was out in the park, well … what better person to get them safely through Jurassic Park than a dinosaur expert?

IN THE PARK

“I’m tired,” Lex said. “Carry me, Dr. Grant.”

“You’re too big to carry,” Tim said.

“But I’m tired,” she said.

“Okay, Lex,” Grant said, picking her up. “Oof, you’re heavy.”

It was almost 9:00 p.m. The full moon was blurred by drifting mist, and their blunted shadows led them across an open field, toward dark woods beyond. Grant was lost in thought, trying to decide where he was. Since they had originally crossed over the fence that the tyrannosaur had battered down, Grant was reasonably sure they were now somewhere in the tyrannosaur paddock. Which was a place he did not want to be. In his mind, he kept seeing the computer tracing of the tyrannosaur’s home range, the tight squiggle of lines that traced his movements within a small area. He and the kids were in that area now.

But Grant also remembered that the tyrannosaurs were isolated from all the other animals, which meant they would know they had left the paddock when they crossed a barrier—a fence, or a moat, or both.

He had seen no barriers, so far.

The girl put her head on his shoulder, and twirled her hair in her fingers. Soon she was snoring. Tim trudged alongside Grant.

“How you holding up, Tim?”

“Okay,” he said. “But I think we might be in the tyrannosaur area.”

“I’m pretty sure we are. I hope we get out soon.”

“You going to go into the woods?” Tim said. As they came closer, the woods seemed dark and forbidding.

“Yes,” Grant said. “I think we can navigate by the numbers on the motion sensors.”

The motion sensors were green boxes set about four feet off the ground. Some were freestanding; most were attached to trees. None of them were working, because apparently the power was still off. Each sensor box had a glass lens mounted in the center, and a painted code number beneath that. Up ahead, in the mist-streaked moonlight, Grant could see a box marked T/S/04.

They entered the forest. Huge trees loomed on all sides. In the moonlight, a low mist clung to the ground, curling around the roots of the trees. It was beautiful, but it made walking treacherous. And Grant was watching the sensors. They seemed to be numbered in descending order. He passed T/S/03, and T/S/02. Eventually they reached T/S/01. He was tired from carrying the girl, and he had hoped this would coincide with a boundary for the tyrannosaur paddock, but it was just another box in the middle of the woods. The next box after that was marked T/N/01, followed by T/N/02. Grant realized the numbers must be arranged geographically around a central point, like a compass. They were going from south to north, so the numbers got smaller as they approached the center, then got larger again.

“At least we’re going the right way,” Tim said.

“Good for you,” Grant said.

Tim smiled, and stumbled over vines in the mist. He got quickly to his feet. They walked on for a while. “My parents are getting a divorce,” he said.

“Uh-huh,” Grant said.

“My dad moved out last month. He has his own place in Mill Valley now.”

“Uh-huh.”

“He never carries my sister any more. He never even picks her up.”

“And he says you have dinosaurs on the brain,” Grant said.

Tim sighed. “Yeah.”

“You miss him?” Grant said.

“Not really,” Tim said. “Sometimes. She misses him more.”

“Who, your mother?”

“No, Lex. My mom has a boyfriend. She knows him from work.”

They walked in silence for a while, passing T/N/03 and T/N/04.

“Have you met him?” Grant said.

“Yeah.”

“How is he?”

“He’s okay,” Tim said. “He’s younger than my dad, but he’s bald.”

“How does he treat you?”

“I don’t know. Okay. I think he just tries to get on my good side. I don’t know what’s going to happen. Sometimes my mom says we’ll have to sell the house and move. Sometimes he and my mom fight, late at night. I sit in my room and play with my computer, but I can still hear it.”

“Uh-huh,” Grant said.

“Are you divorced?”

“No,” Grant said. “My wife died a long time ago.”

“And now you’re with Dr. Sattler?”

Grant smiled in the darkness. “No. She’s my student.”

“You mean she’s still in school?”

“Graduate school, yes.” Grant paused long enough to shift Lex to his other shoulder, and then they continued on, past T/N/05 and T/N/06. There was the rumble of thunder in the distance. The storm had moved to the south. There was very little sound in the forest except for the drone of cicadas and the soft croaking of tree frogs.

“You have children?” Tim asked.

“No,” Grant said.

“Are you going to marry Dr. Sattler?”

“No, she’s marrying a nice doctor in Chicago sometime next year.”

“Oh,” Tim said. He seemed surprised to hear it. They walked along for a while. “Then who are you going to marry?”

“I don’t think I’m going to marry anybody,” Grant said.

“Me neither,” Tim said.

They walked for a while. Tim said, “Are we going to walk all night?”

“I don’t think I can,” Grant said. “We’ll have to stop, at least for a few hours.” He glanced at his watch. “We’re okay. We’ve got almost fifteen hours before we have to be back. Before the ship reaches the mainland.”

“Where are we going to stop?” Tim asked, immediately.

Grant was wondering the same thing. His first thought was that they might climb a tree, and sleep up there. But they would have to climb very high to get safely away from the animals, and Lex might fall out while she was asleep. And tree branches were hard; they wouldn’t get any rest. At least, he wouldn’t.

They needed someplace really safe. He thought back to the plans he had seen on the jet coming down. He remembered that there were outlying buildings for each of the different divisions. Grant didn’t know what they were like, because plans for the individual buildings weren’t included. And he couldn’t remember exactly where they were, but he remembered they were scattered all around the park. There might be buildings somewhere nearby.

But that was a different requirement from simply crossing a barrier and getting out of the tyrannosaur paddock. Finding a building meant a search strategy of some kind. And the best strategies were—

“Tim, can you hold your sister for me? I’m going to climb a tree and have a look around.”

High in the branches, he had a good view of the forest, the tops of the trees extending away to his left and right. They were surprisingly near the edge of the forest—directly ahead the trees ended before a clearing, with an electrified fence and a pale concrete moat. Beyond that, a large open field in what he assumed was the sauropod paddock. In the distance, more trees, and misty moonlight sparkling on the ocean.

Somewhere he heard the bellowing of a dinosaur, but it was far away. He put on Tim’s night-vision goggles and looked again. He followed the gray curve of the moat, and then saw what he was looking for: the dark strip of a service road, leading to the flat rectangle of a roof. The roof was barely above ground level, but it was there. And it wasn’t far. Maybe a quarter of a mile or so from the tree.

When he came back down, Lex was sniffling.

“What’s the matter?”

“I heard an aminal.”

“It won’t bother us. Are you awake now? Come on.”

He led her to the fence. It was twelve feet high, with a spiral of barbed wire at the top. It seemed to stretch far above them in the moonlight. The moat was immediately on the other side.

Lex looked up at the fence doubtfully.

“Can you climb it?” Grant asked her.

She handed him her glove, and her baseball. “Sure. Easy.” She started to climb. “But I bet Timmy can’t.”

Tim spun in fury: “You shut up.”

“Timmy’s afraid of heights.”

“I am not.”

She climbed higher. “Are so.”

“Am not.”

“Then come and get me.”

Grant turned to Tim, pale in the darkness. The boy wasn’t moving. “You okay with the fence, Tim?”

“Sure.”

“Want some help?”

“Timmy’s a fraidy-cat,” Lex called.

“What a stupid jerk,” Tim said, and he started to climb.

“It’s freezing,” Lex said. They were standing waist-deep in smelly water at the bottom of a deep concrete moat. They had climbed the fence without incident, except that Tim had torn his shirt on the coils of barbed wire at the top. Then they had all slid down into the moat, and now Grant was looking for a way out.

“At least I got Timmy over the fence for you,” Lex said. “He really is scared most times.”

“Thanks for your help,” Tim said sarcastically. In the moonlight, he could see floating lumps on the surface. He moved along the moat, looking at the concrete wall on the far side. The concrete was smooth; they couldn’t possibly climb it.

“Eww,” Lex said, pointing to the water.

“It won’t hurt you, Lex.”

Grant finally found a place where the concrete had cracked and a vine grew down toward the water. He tugged on the vine, and it held his weight. “Let’s go, kids.” They started to climb the vine, back to the field above.

It took only a few minutes to cross the field to the embankment leading to the below-grade service road, and the maintenance building off to the right. They passed two motion sensors, and Grant noticed with some uneasiness that the sensors were still not working, nor were the lights. More than two hours had passed since the power first went out, and it was not yet restored.

Somewhere in the distance, they heard the tyrannosaur roar. “Is he around here?” Lex said.

“No,” Grant said. “We’re in another section of park from him.” They slid down a grassy embankment and moved toward the concrete building. In the darkness it was forbidding, bunker-like.

“What is this place?” Lex said.

“It’s safe,” Grant said, hoping that was true.

The entrance gate was large enough to drive a truck through. It was fitted with heavy bars. Inside, they could see, the building was an open shed, with piles of grass and bales of hay stacked among equipment.

The gate was locked with a heavy padlock. As Grant was examining it, Lex slipped sideways between the bars. “Come on, you guys.”

Tim followed her. “I think you can do it, Dr. Grant.”

He was right; it was a tight squeeze, but Grant was able to ease his body between the bars and get into the shed. As soon as he was inside, a wave of exhaustion struck him.

“I wonder if there’s anything to eat,” Lex said.

“Just hay.” Grant broke open a bale, and spread it around on the concrete. The hay in the center was warm. They lay down, feeling the warmth. Lex curled up beside him, and closed her eyes. Tim put his arm around her. He heard the sauropods trumpeting softly in the distance.

Neither child spoke. They were almost immediately snoring. Grant raised his arm to look at his watch, but it was too dark to see. He felt the warmth of the children against his own body.

Grant closed his eyes, and slept.

CONTROL

Muldoon and Gennaro came into the control room just as Arnold clapped his hands and said, “Got you, you little son of a bitch.”

“What is it?” Gennaro said.

Arnold pointed to the screen:

Vg1 = GetHandl {dat.dt} tempCall {itm.temp}

Vg2 = GetHandl {dat.itl} tempCall {itm.temp}

if Link(Vgl, Vg2) set Lim(Vg1, Vg2) return

if Link(Vg2,Vgl) set Lim(Vg2,Vg1) return

→ on whte_rbt.obj link set security (Vg1), perimeter (Vg2)

limitDat.1 = maxBits (%22) to {limit.04} set on

limitDat.2 = setzero, setfive, 0 {limit .2-var(dzh)}

→ on fini.obj call link.sst {security, perimeter} set to on

→ on fini.obj set link.sst {security, perimeter} restore

→ on fini.obj delete line rf whte_rbt.obj, fini.obj

Vg1 = GetHandl {dat.dt} tempCall {itm.temp}

Vg2 = GetHandl {dat.itl} tempCall {itm.temp}

limitDat.4 = maxBits (%33) to {limit .04} set on

limitDat.5 = setzero, setfive, 0 {limit .2-var(szh)}

“That’s it,” Arnold said, pleased.

“That’s what?” Gennaro asked, staring at the screen.

“I finally found the command to restore the original code. The command called ‘fini.obj’ resets the linked parameters, namely the fence and the power.”

“Good,” Muldoon said.

“But it does something else,” Arnold said. “It then erases the code lines that refer to it. It destroys all evidence it was ever there. Pretty slick.”

Gennaro shook his head. “I don’t know much about computers.”

Although he knew enough to know what it meant when a high-tech company went back to the source code. It meant big, big problems.

“Well, watch this,” Arnold said, and he typed in the command:

FINI.OBJ

The screen flickered and immediately changed.

Vg1 = GetHandl {dat.dt} tempCall {itm.temp}

Vg2 = GetHandl {dat.itl} tempCall {itm.temp}

if Link(Vg1,Vg2) set Lim(Vg1,Vg2) return

if Link(Vg2,Vg1) set Lim(Vg2,Vg1) return

limitDat.1 = maxBits (%22) to {limit .04} set on

limitDat.2 = setzero, setfive, 0 {limit .2-var(dzh)}

Vg1 = GetHandl {dat.dt} tempCall {itm.temp}

Vg2 = GetHandl {dat.itl} tempCall {itm.temp}

limitDat.4 = maxBits (%33) to {limit .04} set on

limitDat.5 = setzero, setfive, 0 {limit .2-var(szh)}

Muldoon pointed to the windows. “Look!” Outside, the big quartz lights were coming on throughout the park. They went to the windows and looked out.

“Hot damn,” Arnold said.

Gennaro said, “Does this mean the electrified fences are back on?”

“You bet it does,” Arnold said. “It’ll take a few seconds to get up to full power, because we’ve got fifty miles of fence out there, and the generator has to charge the capacitors along the way. But in half a minute we’ll be back in business.” Arnold pointed to the vertical glass see-through map of the park.

On the map, bright red lines were snaking out from the power station, moving throughout the park, as electricity surged through the fences.

“And the motion sensors?” Gennaro said.

“Yes, them, too. It’ll be a few minutes while the computer counts. But everything’s working,” Arnold said. “Half past nine, and we’ve got the whole damn thing back up and running.”

Grant opened his eyes. Brilliant blue light was streaming into the building through the bars of the gate. Quartz light: the power was back on! Groggily, he looked at his watch. It was just nine-thirty. He’d been asleep only a couple of minutes. He decided he could sleep a few minutes more, and then he would go back up to the field and stand in front of the motion sensors and wave, setting them off. The control room would spot him; they’d send a car out to pick him and the kids up, he’d tell Arnold to recall the supply ship, and they’d all finish the night in their own beds back in the lodge.

He would do that right away. In just a couple of minutes. He yawned, and closed his eyes again.

“Not bad,” Arnold said in the control room, staring at the glowing map. “There’s only three cutouts in the whole park. Much better than I hoped for.”

“Cutouts?” Gennaro said.

“The fence automatically cuts out short-circuited sections,” he explained. “You can see a big one here, in sector twelve, near the main road.”

“That’s where the rex knocked the fence down,” Muldoon said.

“Exactly. And another one is here in sector eleven. Near the sauropod maintenance building.”

“Why would that section be out?” Gennaro said.

“God knows,” Arnold said. “Probably storm damage or a fallen tree. We can check it on the monitor in a while. The third one is over there by the jungle river. Don’t know why that should be out, either.”

As Gennaro looked, the map became more complex, filling with green spots and numbers. “What’s all this?”

“The animals. The motion sensors are working again, and the computer’s starting to identify the location of all the animals in the park. And anybody else, too.”

Gennaro stared at the map. “You mean Grant and the kids …”

“Yes. We’ve reset our search number above four hundred. So, if they’re out there moving around,” Arnold said, “the motion sensors will pick them up as additional animals.” He stared at the map. “But I don’t see any additionals yet.”

“Why does it take so long?” Gennaro said.

“You have to realize, Mr. Gennaro,” Arnold said, “that there’s a lot of extraneous movement out there. Branches blowing in the wind, birds flying around, all kinds of stuff. The computer has to eliminate all the background movement. It may take—ah. Okay. Count’s finished.”

Gennaro said, “You don’t see the kids?”

Arnold twisted in his chair, and looked back to the map. “No,” he said, “at the moment, there are no additionals on the map at all. Everything out there has been accounted for as a dinosaur. They’re probably up in a tree, or somewhere else where we can’t see them. I wouldn’t worry yet. Several animals haven’t shown up, like the big rex. That’s probably because it’s sleeping somewhere and not moving. The people may be sleeping, too. We just don’t know.”

Muldoon shook his head. “We better get on with it,” he said. “We need to repair the fences, and get the animals back into their paddocks. According to that computer, we’ve got five to herd back to the proper paddocks. I’ll take the maintenance crews out now.”

Arnold turned to Gennaro. “You may want to see how Dr. Malcolm is doing. Tell Dr. Harding that Muldoon will need him in about an hour to supervise the herding. And I’ll notify Mr. Hammond that we’re starting our final cleanup.”

Gennaro passed through the iron gates and went in the front door of the Safari Lodge. He saw Ellie Sattler coming down the hallway, carrying towels and a pan of steaming water. “There’s a kitchen at the other end,” she said. “We’re using that to boil water for the dressings.”

“How is he?” Gennaro asked.

“Surprisingly good,” she said.

Gennaro followed Ellie down to Malcolm’s room, and was startled to hear the sound of laughter. The mathematician lay on his back in the bed, with Harding adjusting an IV line.

“So the other man says, ‘I’ll tell you frankly, I didn’t like it, Bill. I went back to toilet paper!’ ”

Harding was laughing.

“It’s not bad, is it?” Malcolm said, smiling. “Ah, Mr. Gennaro. You’ve come to see me. Now you know what happens from trying to get a leg up on the situation.”

Gennaro came in, tentatively.

Harding said, “He’s on fairly high doses of morphine.”

“Not high enough, I can tell you,” Malcolm said. “Christ, he’s stingy with his drugs. Did they find the others yet?”

“No, not yet,” Gennaro said. “But I’m glad to see you doing so well.”

“How else should I be doing,” Malcolm said, “with a compound fracture of the leg that is likely septic and beginning to smell rather, ah, pungent? But I always say, if you can’t keep a sense of humor …”

Gennaro smiled. “Do you remember what happened?”

“Of course I remember,” Malcolm said. “Do you think you could be bitten by a Tyrannosaurus rex and it would escape your mind? No indeed, I’ll tell you, you’d remember it for the rest of your life. In my case, perhaps not a terribly long time. But, still—yes, I remember.”

Malcolm described running from the Land Cruiser in the rain, and being chased down by the rex. “It was my own damned fault, he was too close, but I was panicked. In any case, he picked me up in his jaws.”

“How?” Gennaro said.

“Torso,” Malcolm said, and lifted his shirt. A broad semicircle of bruised punctures ran from his shoulder to his navel. “Lifted me up in his jaws, shook me bloody hard, and threw me down. And I was fine—terrified of course, but, still and all, fine—right up to the moment he threw me. I broke the leg in the fall. But the bite was not half bad.” He sighed. “Considering.”

Harding said, “Most of the big carnivores don’t have strong jaws. The real power is in the neck musculature. The jaws just hold on, while they use the neck to twist and rip. But with a small creature like Dr. Malcolm, the animal would just shake him, and then toss him.”

“I’m afraid that’s right,” Malcolm said. “I doubt I’d have survived, except the big chap’s heart wasn’t in it. To tell the truth, he struck me as a rather clumsy attacker of anything less than an automobile or a small apartment building.”

“You think he attacked halfheartedly?”

“It pains me to say it,” Malcolm said, “but I don’t honestly feel I had his full attention. He had mine, of course. But, then, he weighs eight tons. I don’t.”

Gennaro turned to Harding and said, “They’re going to repair the fences now. Arnold says Muldoon will need your help herding animals.”

“Okay,” Harding said.

“So long as you leave me Dr. Sattler, and ample morphine,” Malcolm said. “And so long as we do not have a Malcolm Effect here.”

“What’s a Malcolm Effect?” Gennaro said.

“Modesty forbids me,” Malcolm said, “from telling you the details of a phenomenon named after me.” He sighed again, and closed his eyes. In a moment, he was sleeping.

Ellie walked out into the hallway with Gennaro. “Don’t be fooled,” she said. “It’s a great strain on him. When will you have a helicopter here?”

“A helicopter?”

“He needs surgery on that leg. Make sure they send for a helicopter, and get him off this island.”

THE PARK

The portable generator sputtered and roared to life, and the quartz floodlights glowed at the ends of their telescoping arms. Muldoon heard the soft gurgle of the jungle river a few yards to the north. He turned back to the maintenance van and saw one of the workmen coming out with a big power saw.

“No, no,” he said. “Just the ropes, Carlos. We don’t need to cut it.”

He turned back to look at the fence. They had difficulty finding the shorted section at first, because there wasn’t much to see: a small protocarpus tree was leaning against the fence. It was one of several that had been planted in this region of the park, their feathery branches intended to conceal the fence from view.

But this particular tree had been tied down with guy wires and turnbuckles. The wires had broken free in the storm, and the metal turnbuckles had blown against the fence and shorted it out. Of course, none of this should have happened; grounds crews were supposed to use plastic-coated wires and ceramic turnbuckles near fences. But it had happened anyway.

In any case, it wasn’t going to be a big job. All they had to do was pull the tree off the fence, remove the metal fittings, and mark it for the gardeners to fix in the morning. It shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes. And that was just as well, because Muldoon knew the dilophosaurs always stayed close to the river. Even though the workmen were separated from the river by the fence, the dilos could spit right through it, delivering their blinding poison.

Ramón, one of the workmen, came over. “Señor Muldoon,” he said, “did you see the lights?”

“What lights?” Muldoon said.

Ramón pointed to the east, through the jungle. “I saw it as we were coming out. It is there, very faint. You see it? It looks like the lights of a car, but it is not moving.”

Muldoon squinted. It probably was just a maintenance light. After all, power was back on. “We’ll worry about it later,” he said. “Right now let’s just get that tree off the fence.”

Arnold was in an expansive mood. The park was almost back in order. Muldoon was repairing the fences. Hammond had gone off to supervise the transfer of the animals with Harding. Although he was tired, Arnold was feeling good; he was even in a mood to indulge the lawyer, Gennaro. “The Malcolm Effect?” Arnold said. “You worried about that?”

“I’m just curious,” Gennaro said.

“You mean you want me to tell you why Ian Malcolm is wrong?”

“Sure.”

Arnold lit another cigarette. “It’s technical.”

“Try me.”

“Okay,” Arnold said. “Chaos theory describes nonlinear systems. It’s now become a very broad theory that’s been used to study everything from the stock market to heart rhythms. A very fashionable theory. Very trendy to apply it to any complex system where there might be unpredictability. Okay?”

“Okay,” Gennaro said.

“Ian Malcolm is a mathematician specializing in chaos theory. Quite amusing and personable, but basically what he does, besides wear black, is use computers to model the behavior of complex systems. And John Hammond loves the latest scientific fad, so he asked Malcolm to model the system at Jurassic Park. Which Malcolm did. Malcolm’s models are all phase-space shapes on a computer screen. Have you seen them?”

“No,” Gennaro said.

“Well, they look like a weird twisted ship’s propeller. According to Malcolm, the behavior of any system follows the surface of the propeller. You with me?”

“Not exactly,” Gennaro said.

Arnold held his hand in the air. “Let’s say I put a drop of water on the back of my hand. That drop is going to run off my hand. Maybe it’ll run toward my wrist. Maybe it’ll run toward my thumb, or down between my fingers. I don’t know for sure where it will go, but I know it will run somewhere along the surface of my hand. It has to.”

“Okay,” Gennaro said.

“Chaos theory treats the behavior of a whole system like a drop of water moving on a complicated propeller surface. The drop may spiral down, or slip outward toward the edge. It may do many different things, depending. But it will always move along the surface of the propeller.”

“Okay.”

“Malcolm’s models tend to have a ledge, or a sharp incline, where the drop of water will speed up greatly. He modestly calls this speeding-up movement the Malcolm Effect. The whole system could suddenly collapse. And that was what he said about Jurassic Park. That it had inherent instability.”

“Inherent instability,” Gennaro said. “And what did you do when you got his report?”

“We disagreed with it, and ignored it, of course,” Arnold said.

“Was that wise?”

“It’s self-evident,” Arnold said. “We’re dealing with living systems, after all. This is life, not computer models.”

In the harsh quartz lights, the hypsilophodont’s green head hung down out of the sling, the tongue dangling, the eyes dull.

“Careful! Careful!” Hammond shouted, as the crane began to lift.

Harding grunted and eased the head back onto the leather straps. He didn’t want to impede circulation through the carotid artery. The crane hissed as it lifted the animal into the air, onto the waiting flatbed truck. The hypsy was a small dryosaur, seven feet long, weighing about five hundred pounds. She was dark green with mottled brown spots. She was breathing slowly, but she seemed all right. Harding had shot her a few moments before with the tranquilizer gun, and apparently he had guessed the correct dose. There was always a tense moment dosing these big animals. Too little and they would run off into the forest, collapsing where you couldn’t get to them. Too much and they went into terminal cardiac arrest. This one had taken a single bounding leap and keeled over. Perfectly dosed.

“Watch it! Easy!” Hammond was shouting to the workmen.

“Mr. Hammond,” Harding said. “Please.”

“Well, they should be careful—”

“They are being careful,” Harding said. He climbed up onto the back of the flatbed as the hypsy came down, and he set her into the restraining harness. Harding slipped on the cardiogram collar that monitored heartbeat, then picked up the big electronic thermometer the size of a turkey baster and slipped it into the rectum. It beeped: 96.2 degrees.

“How is she?” Hammond asked fretfully.

“She’s fine,” Harding said. “She’s only dropped a degree and a half.”

“That’s too much,” Hammond said. “Too deep.”

“You don’t want her waking up and jumping off the truck,” Harding snapped.

Before coming to the park, Harding had been the chief of veterinary medicine at the San Diego Zoo, and the world’s leading expert on avian care. He flew all over the world, consulting with zoos in Europe, India, and Japan on the care of exotic birds. He’d had no interest when this peculiar little man showed up, offering him a position in a private game park. But when he learned what Hammond had done … It was impossible to pass up. Harding had an academic bent, and the prospect of writing the first Textbook of Veterinary Internal Medicine: Diseases of Dinosauria was compelling. In the late twentieth century, veterinary medicine was scientifically advanced; the best zoos ran clinics little different from hospitals. New textbooks were merely refinements of old. For a world-class practitioner, there were no worlds left to conquer. But to be the first to care for a whole new class of animals: that was something!

And Harding had never regretted his decision. He had developed considerable expertise with these animals. And he didn’t want to hear from Hammond now.

The hypsy snorted and twitched. She was still breathing shallowly; there was no ocular reflex yet. But it was time to get moving. “All aboard,” Harding shouted. “Let’s get this girl back to her paddock.”

“Living systems,” Arnold said, “are not like mechanical systems. Living systems are never in equilibrium. They are inherently unstable. They may seem stable, but they’re not. Everything is moving and changing. In a sense, everything is on the edge of collapse.”

Gennaro was frowning. “But lots of things don’t change; body temperature doesn’t change, all kinds of other—”

“Body temperature changes constantly,” Arnold said. “Constantly. It changes cyclically over twenty-four hours, lowest in the morning, highest in the afternoon. It changes with mood, with disease, with exercise, with outside temperature, with food. It continuously fluctuates up and down. Tiny jiggles on a graph. Because, at any moment, some forces are pushing temperature up, and other forces are pulling it down. It is inherently unstable. And every other aspect of living systems is like that, too.”

“So you’re saying …”

“Malcolm’s just another theoretician,” Arnold said. “Sitting in his office, he made a nice mathematical model, and it never occurred to him that what he saw as defects were actually necessities. Look: when I was working on missiles, we dealt with something called ‘resonant yaw.’ Resonant yaw meant that, even though a missile was only slightly unstable off the pad, it was hopeless. It was inevitably going to go out of control, and it couldn’t be brought back. That’s a feature of mechanical systems. A little wobble can get worse until the whole system collapses. But those same little wobbles are essential to a living system. They mean the system is healthy and responsive. Malcolm never understood that.”

“Are you sure he didn’t understand that? He seems pretty clear on the difference between living and nonliving—”

“Look,” Arnold said. “The proof is right here.” He pointed to the screens. “In less than an hour,” he said, “the park will all be back on line. The only thing I’ve got left to clear is the telephones. For some reason, they’re still out. But everything else will be working. And that’s not theoretical. That’s a fact.”

The needle went deep into the neck, and Harding injected the medrine into the anesthetized female dryosaur as she lay on her side on the ground. Immediately the animal began to recover, snorting and kicking her powerful hind legs.

“Back, everybody,” Harding said, scrambling away. “Get back.”

The dinosaur staggered to her feet, standing drunkenly. She shook her lizard head, stared at the people standing back in the quartz lights, and blinked.

“She’s drooling,” Hammond said, worried.

“Temporary,” Harding said. “It’ll stop.”

The dryosaur coughed, and then moved slowly across the field, away from the lights.

“Why isn’t she hopping?”

“She will,” Harding said. “It’ll take her about an hour to recover fully. She’s fine.” He turned back to the car. “Okay, boys, let’s go deal with the stego.”

Muldoon watched as the last of the stakes was pounded into the ground. The lines were pulled taut, and the protocarpus tree was lifted clear. Muldoon could see the blackened, charred streaks on the silver fence where the short had occurred. At the base of the fence, several ceramic insulators had burst. They would have to be replaced. But before that could be done, Arnold would have to shut down all the fences.

“Control. This is Muldoon. We’re ready to begin repair.”

“All right,” Arnold said. “Shutting out your section now.”

Muldoon glanced at his watch. Somewhere in the distance, he heard soft hooting. It sounded like owls, but he knew it was the dilophosaurs. He went over to Ramón and said, “Let’s finish this up. I want to get to those other sections of fence.”

An hour went by. Donald Gennaro stared at the glowing map in the control room as the spots and numbers flickered and changed. “What’s happening now?”

Arnold worked at the console. “I’m trying to get the phones back. So we can call about Malcolm.”

“No, I mean out there.”

Arnold glanced up at the board. “It looks as if they’re about done with the animals, and the two sections. Just as I told you, the park is back in hand. With no catastrophic Malcolm Effect. In fact, there’s just that third section of fence.…”

“Arnold.” It was Muldoon’s voice.

“Yes?”

“Have you seen this bloody fence?”

“Just a minute.”

On one of the monitors, Gennaro saw a high angle down on a field of grass, blowing in the wind. In the distance was a low concrete roof. “That’s the sauropod maintenance building,” Arnold explained. “It’s one of the utility structures we use for equipment, feed storage, and so on. We have them all around the park, in each of the paddocks.” On the monitor, the video image panned. “We’re turning the camera now to get a look at the fence.…”

Gennaro saw a shining wall of metallic mesh in the light. One section had been trampled, knocked flat. Muldoon’s Jeep and work crew were there.

“Huh,” Arnold said. “Looks like the rex went into the sauropod paddock.”

Muldoon said, “Fine dining tonight.”

“We’ll have to get him out of there,” Arnold said.

“With what?” Muldoon said. “We haven’t got anything to use on a rex. I’ll fix this fence, but I’m not going in there until daylight.”

“Hammond won’t like it.”

“We’ll discuss it when I get back,” Muldoon said.

“How many sauropods will the rex kill?” Hammond said, pacing around the control room.

“Probably just one,” Harding said. “Sauropods are big; the rex can feed off a single kill for several days.”

“We have to go out and get him tonight,” Hammond said.

Muldoon shook his head. “I’m not going in there until daylight.”

Hammond was rising up and down on the balls of his feet, the way he did whenever he was angry. “Are you forgetting you work for me?”

“No, Mr. Hammond, I’m not forgetting. But that’s a full-grown adult tyrannosaur out there. How do you plan to get him?”

“We have tranquilizer guns.”

“We have tranquilizer guns that shoot a twenty-cc dart,” Muldoon said. “Fine for an animal that weighs four or five hundred pounds. That tyrannosaur weighs eight tons. It wouldn’t even feel it.”

“You ordered a larger weapon.…”

“I ordered three larger weapons, Mr. Hammond, but you cut the requisition, so we got only one. And it’s gone. Nedry took it when he left.”

“That was pretty stupid. Who let that happen?”

“Nedry’s not my problem, Mr. Hammond,” Muldoon said.

“You’re saying,” Hammond said, “that, as of this moment, there is no way to stop the tyrannosaur?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Muldoon said.

“That’s ridiculous,” Hammond said.

“It’s your park, Mr. Hammond. You didn’t want anybody to be able to injure your precious dinosaurs. Well, now you’ve got a rex in with the sauropods, and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it.” He left the room.

“Just a minute,” Hammond said, hurrying after him.

Gennaro stared at the screens, and listened to the shouted argument in the hallway outside. He said to Arnold, “I guess you don’t have control of the park yet, after all.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” Arnold said, lighting another cigarette. “We have the park. It’ll be dawn in a couple of hours. We may lose a couple of dinos before we get the rex out of there, but, believe me, we have the park.”

DAWN

Grant was awakened by a loud grinding sound, followed by a mechanical clanking. He opened his eyes and saw a bale of hay rolling past him on a conveyor belt, up toward the ceiling. Two more bales followed it. Then the clanking stopped as abruptly as it had begun, and the concrete building was silent again.

Grant yawned. He stretched sleepily, winced in pain, and sat up.

Soft yellow light came through the side windows. It was morning: he had slept the whole night! He looked quickly at his watch: 5:00 a.m. Still almost six hours to go before the boat had to be recalled. He rolled onto his back, groaning. His head throbbed, and his body ached as if he had been beaten up. From around the corner, he heard a squeaking sound, like a rusty wheel. And then Lex giggling.

Grant stood slowly, and looked at the building. Now that it was daylight, he could see it was some kind of a maintenance building, with stacks of hay and supplies. On the wall he saw a gray metal box and a stenciled sign: SAUROPOD MAINTENANCE BLDG (04). This must be the sauropod paddock, as he had thought. He opened the box and saw a telephone, but when he lifted the receiver he heard only hissing static. Apparently the phones weren’t working yet.

“Chew your food,” Lex was saying. “Don’t be a piggy, Ralph.”

Grant walked around the corner and found Lex by the bars, holding out handfuls of hay to an animal outside that looked like a large pink pig and was making the squeaking sounds Grant had heard. It was actually an infant triceratops, about the size of a pony. The infant didn’t have horns on its head yet, just a curved bony frill behind big soft eyes. It poked its snout through the bars toward Lex, its eyes watching her as she fed it more hay.

“That’s better,” Lex said. “There’s plenty of hay, don’t worry.” She patted the baby on the head. “You like hay, don’t you, Ralph?”

Lex turned back and saw him.

“This is Ralph,” Lex said. “He’s my friend. He likes hay.”

Grant took a step and stopped, wincing.

“You look pretty bad,” Lex said.

“I feel pretty bad.”

“Tim, too. His nose is all swollen up.”

“Where is Tim?”

“Peeing,” she said. “You want to help me feed Ralph?”

The baby triceratops looked at Grant. Hay stuck out of both sides of its mouth, dropping on the floor as it chewed.

“He’s a very messy eater,” Lex said. “And he’s very hungry.”

The baby finished chewing and licked its lips. It opened its mouth, waiting for more. Grant could see the slender sharp teeth, and the beaky upper jaw, like a parrot.

“Okay, just a minute,” Lex said, scooping up more straw from the concrete floor. “Honestly, Ralph,” she said, “you’d think your mother never fed you.”

“Why is his name Ralph?”

“Because he looks like Ralph. At school.”

Grant came closer and touched the skin of the neck gently.

“It’s okay, you can pet him,” Lex said. “He likes it when you pet him, don’t you, Ralph?”

The skin felt dry and warm, with the pebbled texture of a football. Ralph gave a little squeak as Grant petted it. Outside the bars, its thick tail swung back and forth with pleasure.

“He’s pretty tame.” Ralph looked from Lex to Grant as it ate, and showed no sign of fear. It reminded Grant that the dinosaurs didn’t have ordinary responses to people. “Maybe I can ride him,” Lex said.

“Let’s not.”

“I bet he’d let me,” Lex said. “It’d be fun to ride a dinosaur.”

Grant looked out the bars past the animal, to the open fields of the sauropod compound. It was growing lighter every minute. He should go outside, he thought, and set off one of the motion sensors on the field above. After all, it might take the people in the control room an hour to get out here to him. And he didn’t like the idea that the phones were still down.…

He heard a deep snorting sound, like the snort of a very large horse, and suddenly the baby became agitated. It tried to pull its head back through the bars, but got caught on the edge of its frill, and it squeaked in fright.

The snorting came again. It was closer this time.

Ralph reared up on its hind legs, frantic to get out from between the bars. It wriggled its head back and forth, rubbing against the bars.

“Ralph, take it easy,” Lex said.

“Push him out,” Grant said. He reached up to Ralph’s head and leaned against it, pushing the animal sideways and backward. The frill popped free and the baby fell outside the bars, losing its balance and flopping on its side. Then the baby was covered in shadow, and a huge leg came into view, thicker than a tree trunk. The foot had five curved toenails, like an elephant’s.

Ralph looked up and squeaked. A head came down into view: six feet long, with three long white horns, one above each of the large brown eyes and a smaller horn at the tip of the nose. It was a full-grown triceratops. The big animal peered at Lex and Grant, blinking slowly, and then turned its attention to Ralph. A tongue came out and licked the baby. Ralph squeaked and rubbed up against the big leg happily.

“Is that his mom?” Lex said.

“Looks like it,” Grant said.

“Should we feed the mom, too?” Lex said.

But the big triceratops was already nudging Ralph with her snout, pushing the baby away from the bars.

“Guess not.”

The infant turned away from the bars and walked off. From time to time, the big mother nudged her baby, guiding it away, as they both walked out into the fields.

“Good-bye, Ralph,” Lex said, waving. Tim came out of the shadows of the building.

“Tell you what,” Grant said. “I’m going up on the hill to set off the motion sensors, so they’ll know to come get us. You two stay here and wait for me.”

“No,” Lex said.

“Why? Stay here. It’s safe here.”

“You’re not leaving us,” she said. “Right, Timmy?”

“Right,” Tim said.

“Okay,” Grant said.

They crawled through the bars, stepping outside.

It was just before dawn.

The air was warm and humid, the sky soft pink and purple. A white mist clung low to the ground. Some distance away, they saw the mother triceratops and the baby moving away toward a herd of large duckbilled hadrosaurs, eating foliage from trees at the edge of the lagoon.

Some of the hadrosaurs stood knee-deep in the water. They drank, lowering their flat heads, meeting their own reflections in the still water. Then they looked up again, their heads swiveling. At the water’s edge, one of the babies ventured out, squeaked, and scrambled back while the adults watched indulgently.

Farther south, other hadrosaurs were eating the lower vegetation. Sometimes they reared up on their hind legs, resting their forelegs on the tree trunks, so they could reach the leaves on higher branches. And in the far distance, a giant apatosaur stood above the trees, the tiny head swiveling on the long neck. The scene was so peaceful Grant found it hard to imagine any danger.

“Yow!” Lex shouted, ducking. Two giant red dragonflies with six-foot wingspans hummed past them. “What was that?”

“Dragonflies,” he said. “The Jurassic was a time of huge insects.”

“Do they bite?” Lex said.

“I don’t think so,” Grant said.

Tim held out his hand. One of the dragonflies lighted on it. He could feel the weight of the huge insect.

“He’s going to bite you,” Lex warned.

But the dragonfly just slowly flapped its red-veined transparent wings, and then, when Tim moved his arm, flew off again.

“Which way do we go?” Lex said.

“There.”

They started walking across the field. They reached a black box mounted on a heavy metal tripod, the first of the motion sensors. Grant stopped and waved his hand in front of it back and forth, but nothing happened. If the phones didn’t work, perhaps the sensors didn’t work, either. “We’ll try another one,” he said, pointing across the field. Somewhere in the distance, they heard the roar of a large animal.

“Ah hell,” Arnold said. “I just can’t find it.” He sipped coffee and stared bleary-eyed at the screens. He had taken all the video monitors off line. In the control room, he was searching the computer code. He was exhausted; he’d been working for twelve straight hours. He turned to Wu, who had come up from the lab.

“Find what?”

“The phones are still out. I can’t get them back on. I think Nedry did something to the phones.”

Wu lifted one phone, heard hissing. “Sounds like a modem.”

“But it’s not,” Arnold said. “Because I went down into the basement and shut off all the modems. What you’re hearing is just white noise that sounds like a modem transmitting.”

“So the phone lines are jammed?”

“Basically, yes. Nedry jammed them very well. He’s inserted some kind of a lockout into the program code, and now I can’t find it, because I gave that restore command which erased part of the program listings. But apparently the command to shut off the phones is still resident in the computer memory.”

Wu shrugged. “So? Just reset: shut the system down and you’ll clear memory.”

“I’ve never done it before,” Arnold said. “And I’m reluctant to do it. Maybe all the systems will come back on start-up—but maybe they won’t. I’m not a computer expert, and neither are you. Not really. And without an open phone line, we can’t talk to anybody who is.”

“If the command is RAM-resident, it won’t show up in the code. You can do a RAM dump and search that, but you don’t know what you’re searching for. I think all you can do is reset.”

Gennaro stormed in. “We still don’t have any telephones.”

“Working on it.”

“You’ve been working on it since midnight. And Malcolm is worse. He needs medical attention.”

“It means I’ll have to shut down,” Arnold said. “I can’t be sure everything will come back on.”

Gennaro said, “Look. There’s a sick man over in that lodge. He needs a doctor or he’ll die. You can’t call for a doctor unless you have a phone. Four people have probably died already. Now, shut down and get the phones working!”

Arnold hesitated.

“Well?” Gennaro said.

“Well, it’s just … the safety systems don’t allow the computer to be shut down, and—”

“Then turn the goddamn safety systems off! Can’t you get it through your head that he’s going to die unless he gets help?”

“Okay,” Arnold said.

He got up and went to the main panel. He opened the doors, and uncovered the metal swing-latches over the safety switches. He popped them off, one after another. “You asked for it,” Arnold said. “And you got it.”

He threw the master switch.

The control room was dark. All the monitors were black. The three men stood there in the dark.

“How long do we have to wait?” Gennaro said.

“Thirty seconds,” Arnold said.

“P-U!” Lex said, as they crossed the field.

“What?” Grant said.

“That smell!” Lex said. “It stinks like rotten garbage.”

Grant hesitated. He stared across the field toward the distant trees, looking for movement. He saw nothing. There was hardly a breeze to stir the branches. It was peaceful and silent in the early morning. “I think it’s your imagination,” he said.

“Is not—”

Then he heard the honking sound. It came from the herd of duckbilled hadrosaurs behind them. First one animal, then another and another, until the whole herd had taken up the honking cry. The duckbills were agitated, twisting and turning, hurrying out of the water, circling the young ones to protect them.…

They smell it, too, Grant thought.

With a roar, the tyrannosaur burst from the trees fifty yards away, near the lagoon. It rushed out across the open field with huge strides. It ignored them, heading toward the herd of hadrosaurs.

“I told you!” Lex screamed. “Nobody listens to me!”

In the distance, the duckbills were honking and starting to run. Grant could feel the earth shake beneath his feet. “Come on, kids!” He grabbed Lex, lifting her bodily off the ground, and ran with Tim through the grass. He had glimpses of the tyrannosaur down by the lagoon, lunging at the hadrosaurs, which swung their big tails in defense and honked loudly and continuously. He heard the crashing of foliage and trees, and when he looked over again, the duckbills were charging.

In the darkened control room, Arnold checked his watch. Thirty seconds. The memory should be cleared by now. He pushed the main power switch back on.

Nothing happened.

Arnold’s stomach heaved. He pushed the switch off, then on again. Still nothing happened. He felt sweat on his brow.

“What’s wrong?” Gennaro said. “Oh hell,” Arnold said. Then he remembered you had to turn the safety switches back on before you restarted the power. He flipped on the three safeties, and covered them again with the latch covers. Then he held his breath, and turned the main power switch.

The room lights came on.

The computer beeped.

The screens hummed.

“Thank God,” Arnold said. He hurried to the main monitor. There were rows of labels on the screen:

Gennaro reached for the phone, but it was dead. No static hissing this time—just nothing at all. “What’s this?”

“Give me a second,” Arnold said. “After a reset, all the system modules have to be brought on line manually.” Quickly, he went back to work.

“Why manually?” Gennaro said.

“Will you just let me work, for Christ’s sake?”

Wu said, “The system is not intended to ever shut down. So, if it does shut down, it assumes that there is a problem somewhere. It requires you to start up everything manually. Otherwise, if there were a short somewhere, the system would start up, short out, start up again, short out again, in an endless cycle.”

“Okay,” Arnold said. “We’re going.”

Gennaro picked up the phone and started to dial, when he suddenly stopped.

“Jesus, look at that,” he said. He pointed to one of the video monitors.

But Arnold wasn’t listening. He was staring at the map, where a tight cluster of dots by the lagoon had started to move in a coordinated way. Moving fast, in a kind of swirl.

“What’s happening?” Gennaro said.

“The duckbills,” Arnold said tonelessly. “They’ve stampeded.”

The duckbills charged with surprising speed, their enormous bodies in a tight cluster, honking and roaring, the infants squealing and trying to stay out from underfoot. The herd raised a great cloud of yellow dust. Grant couldn’t see the tyrannosaur.

The duckbills were running right toward them.

Still carrying Lex, he ran with Tim toward a rocky outcrop, with a stand of big conifers. They ran hard, feeling the ground shake beneath their feet. The sound of the approaching herd was deafening, like the sound of jets at an airport. It filled the air, and hurt their ears. Lex was shouting something, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying, and as they scrambled onto the rocks, the herd closed in around them.

Grant saw the immense legs of the first hadrosaurs that charged past, each animal weighing five tons, and then they were enveloped in a cloud so dense he could see nothing at all. He had the impression of huge bodies, giant limbs, bellowing cries of pain as the animals wheeled and circled. One duckbill struck a boulder and it rolled past them, out into the field beyond.

In the dense cloud of dust, they could see almost nothing beyond the rocks. They clung to the boulders, listening to the screams and honks, the menacing roar of the tyrannosaur. Lex dug her fingers into Grant’s shoulder.

Another hadrosaur slammed its big tail against the rocks, leaving a splash of hot blood. Grant waited until the sounds of the fighting had moved off to the left, and then he pushed the kids to start climbing the largest tree. They climbed swiftly, feeling for the branches, as the animals stampeded all around them in the dust. They went up twenty feet, and then Lex clutched at Grant and refused to go farther. Tim was tired, too, and Grant thought they were high enough. Through the dust, they could see the broad backs of the animals below as they wheeled and honked. Grant propped himself against the coarse bark of the trunk, coughed in the dust, closed his eyes, and waited.

Arnold adjusted the camera as the herd moved away. The dust slowly cleared. He saw that the hadrosaurs had scattered, and the tyrannosaur had stopped running, which could only mean it had made a kill. The tyrannosaur was now near the lagoon. Arnold looked at the video monitor and said, “Better get Muldoon to go out there and see how bad it is.”

“I’ll get him,” Gennaro said, and left the room.

THE PARK

A faint crackling sound, like a fire in a fireplace. Something warm and wet tickled Grant’s ankle. He opened his eyes and saw an enormous beige head. The head tapered to a flat mouth shaped like the bill of a duck. The eyes, protruding above the flat duckbill, were gentle and soft like a cow’s. The duck mouth opened and chewed branches on the limb where Grant was sitting. He saw large flat teeth in the cheek. The warm lips touched his ankle again as the animal chewed.

A duckbilled hadrosaur. He was astonished to see it up close. Not that he was afraid; all the species of duckbilled dinosaurs were herbivorous, and this one acted exactly like a cow. Even though it was huge, its manner was so calm and peaceful Grant didn’t feel threatened. He stayed where he was on the branch, careful not to move, and watched as it ate.

The reason Grant was astonished was that he had a proprietary feeling about this animal: it was probably a maiasaur, from the late Cretaceous in Montana. With John Horner, Grant had been the first to describe the species. Maiasaurs had an upcurved lip, which gave them the appearance of smiling. The name meant “good mother lizard”; maiasaurs were thought to protect their eggs until the babies were born and could take care of themselves.

Grant heard an insistent chirping, and the big head swung down. He moved just enough to see the baby hadrosaur scampering around the feet of the adult. The baby was dark beige with black spots. The adult bent her head low to the ground and waited, unmoving, while the baby stood up on its hind legs, resting its front legs on the mother’s jaw, and ate the branches that protruded from the side of the mother’s mouth.

The mother waited patiently until the baby had finished eating, and dropped back down to all fours again. Then the big head came back up toward Grant.

The hadrosaur continued to eat, just a few feet from him. Grant looked at the two elongated airholes on top of the flat upper bill. Apparently the dinosaur couldn’t smell Grant. And even though the left eye was looking right at him, for some reason the hadrosaur didn’t react to him.

He remembered how the tyrannosaur had failed to see him, the previous night. Grant decided on an experiment.

He coughed.

Instantly the hadrosaur froze, the big head suddenly still, the jaws no longer chewing. Only the eye moved, looking for the source of the sound. Then, after a moment, when there seemed to be no danger, the animal resumed chewing.

Amazing, Grant thought.

Sitting in his arms, Lex opened her eyes and said, “Hey, what’s that?”

The hadrosaur trumpeted in alarm, a loud resonant honk that so startled Lex that she nearly fell out of the tree. The hadrosaur pulled its head away from the branch and trumpeted again.

“Don’t make her mad,” Tim said, from the branch above.

The baby chirped and scurried beneath the mother’s legs as the hadrosaur stepped away from the tree. The mother cocked her head and peered inquisitively at the branch where Grant and Lex were sitting. With its upturned smiling lips, the dinosaur had a comical appearance.

“Is it dumb?” Lex said.

“No,” Grant said. “You just surprised her.”

“Well,” Lex said, “is she going to let us get down, or what?”

The hadrosaur had backed ten feet away from the tree. She honked again. Grant had the impression she was trying to frighten them away. But the dinosaur didn’t really seem to know what to do. She acted confused and uneasy. They waited in silence, and after a minute the hadrosaur approached the branch again, jaws moving in anticipation. She was clearly going to resume eating.

“Forget it,” Lex said. “I’m not staying here.” She started to climb down the branches. At her movement, the hadrosaur trumpeted in fresh alarm.

Grant was amazed. He thought, It really can’t see us when we don’t move. And after a minute it literally forgets that we’re here. This was just like the tyrannosaur—another classic example of an amphibian visual cortex. Studies of frogs had shown that amphibians only saw moving things, like insects. If something didn’t move, they literally didn’t see it. The same thing seemed to be true of dinosaurs.

In any case, the maiasaur now seemed to find these strange creatures climbing down the tree too upsetting. With a final honk, she nudged her baby, and lumbered slowly away. She paused once, and looked back at them, then continued on.

They reached the ground. Lex shook herself off. Both children were covered in a layer of fine dust. All around them, the grass had been flattened. There were streaks of blood, and a sour smell.

Grant looked at his watch. “We better get going, kids,” he said.

“Not me,” Lex said. “I’m not walking out there any more.”

“We have to.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Grant said, “we have to tell them about the boat. Since they can’t seem to see us on the motion sensors, we have to go all the way back ourselves. It’s the only way.”

“Why can’t we take the raft?” Tim said.

“What raft?”

Tim pointed to the low concrete maintenance building with the bars, where they had spent the night. It was twenty yards away, across the field. “I saw a raft back there,” he said.

Grant immediately understood the advantages. It was now seven o’clock in the morning. They had at least eight miles to go. If they could take a raft along the river, they would make much faster progress than going overland. “Let’s do it,” Grant said.

Arnold punched the visual search mode and watched as the monitors began to scan throughout the park, the images changing every two seconds. It was tiring to watch, but it was the fastest way to find Nedry’s Jeep, and Muldoon had been adamant about that. He had gone out with Gennaro to look at the stampede, but now that it was daylight, he wanted the car found. He wanted the weapons.

His intercom clicked. “Mr. Arnold, may I have a word with you, please?”

It was Hammond. He sounded like the voice of God.

“You want to come here, Mr. Hammond?”

“No, Mr. Arnold,” Hammond said. “Come to me. I’m in the genetics lab with Dr. Wu. We’ll be waiting for you.”

Arnold sighed, and stepped away from the screens.

Grant stumbled deep in the gloomy recesses of the building. He pushed past five-gallon containers of herbicide, tree-pruning equipment, spare tires for a Jeep, coils of cyclone fencing, hundred-pound fertilizer bags, stacks of brown ceramic insulators, empty motor-oil cans, work lights and cables.

“I don’t see any raft.”

“Keep going.”

Bags of cement, lengths of copper pipe, green mesh … and two plastic oars hung on clips on the concrete wall.

“Okay,” he said, “but where’s the raft?”

“It must be here somewhere,” Tim said.

“You never saw a raft?”

“No, I just assumed it was here.”

Poking among the junk, Grant found no raft. But he did find a set of plans, rolled up and speckled with mold from humidity, stuck back in a metal cabinet on the wall. He spread the plans on the floor, brushing away a big spider. He looked at them for a long time.

“I’m hungry.…”

“Just a minute.”

They were detailed topographical charts for the main area of the island, where they now were. According to this, the lagoon narrowed into the river they had seen earlier, which twisted northward … right through the aviary … and on to within a half-mile of the visitor lodge.

He flipped back through the pages. How to get to the lagoon? According to the plans, there should be a door at the back of the building they were in. Grant looked up, and saw it, recessed back in the concrete wall. The door was wide enough for a car. Opening it, he saw a paved road running straight down toward the lagoon. The road was dug below ground level, so it couldn’t be seen from above. It must be another service road. And it led to a dock at the edge of the lagoon. And clearly stenciled on the dock was RAFT STORAGE.

“Hey,” Tim said, “look at this.” He held out a metal case to Grant.

Opening it, Grant found a compressed-air pistol and a cloth belt that held darts. There were six darts in all, each as thick as his finger. Labeled MORO-709.

“Good work, Tim.” He slung the belt around his shoulder, and stuck the gun in his trousers.

“Is it a tranquilizer gun?”

“I’d say so.”

“What about the boat?” Lex said.

“I think it’s on the dock,” Grant said. They started down the road. Grant carried the oars on his shoulder. “I hope it’s a big raft,” Lex said, “because I can’t swim.”

“Don’t worry,” he said.

“Maybe we can catch some fish,” she said.

They walked down the road with the sloping embankment rising up on both sides of them. They heard a deep rhythmic snorting sound, but Grant could not see where it was coming from.

“Are you sure there’s a raft down here?” Lex said, wrinkling her nose.

“Probably,” Grant said.

The rhythmic snorting became louder as they walked, but they also heard a steady droning, buzzing sound. When they reached the end of the road, at the edge of the small concrete dock, Grant froze in shock.

The tyrannosaur was right there.

It was sitting upright in the shade of a tree, its hind legs stretched out in front. Its eyes were open but it was not moving, except for its head, which lifted and fell gently with each snorting sound. The buzzing came from the clouds of flies that surrounded it, crawling over its face and slack jaws, its bloody fangs, and the red haunch of a killed hadrosaur that lay on its side behind the tyrannosaur.

The tyrannosaur was only twenty yards away. Grant felt sure it must have seen him, but the big animal did not respond. It just sat there. It took him a moment to realize: the tyrannosaur was asleep. Sitting up, but asleep.

He signaled to Tim and Lex to stay where they were. Grant walked slowly forward onto the dock, in full view of the tyrannosaur. The big animal continued to sleep, snoring softly.

Near the end of the dock, a wooden shed was painted green to blend with the foliage. Grant quietly unlatched the door and looked inside. He saw a half-dozen orange life vests hanging on the wall, several rolls of wire-mesh fencing, some coils of rope, and two big rubber cubes sitting on the floor. The cubes were strapped tight with flat rubber belts.

Rafts.

He looked back at Lex.

She mouthed: No boat.

He nodded, Yes.

The tyrannosaur raised its forelimb to swipe at the flies buzzing around its snout. But otherwise it did not move. Grant pulled one of the cubes out onto the dock. It was surprisingly heavy. He freed the straps, found the inflation cylinder. With a loud hiss, the rubber began to expand, and then with a hiss-whap! it popped fully open on the dock. The sound was fearfully loud in their ears.

Grant turned, stared up at the dinosaur.

The tyrannosaur grunted, and snorted. It began to move. Grant braced himself to run, but the animal shifted its ponderous bulk and then it settled back against the tree trunk and gave a long, growling belch.

Lex looked disgusted, waving her hand in front of her face.

Grant was soaked in sweat from the tension. He dragged the rubber raft across the dock. It flopped into the water with a loud splash.

The dinosaur continued to sleep.

Grant tied the boat up to the dock, and returned to the shed to take out two life preservers. He put these in the boat, and then waved for the kids to come out onto the dock.

Pale with fear, Lex waved back, No.

He gestured: Yes.

The tyrannosaur continued to sleep.

Grant stabbed in the air with an emphatic finger. Lex came silently, and he gestured for her to get into the raft; then Tim got in, and they both put on their life vests. Grant got in and pushed off. The raft drifted silently out into the lagoon. Grant picked up his paddles and fitted them into the oarlocks. They moved farther from the dock.

Lex sat back, and sighed loudly with relief. Then she looked stricken, and put her hand over her mouth. Her body shook, with muffled sounds: she was suppressing a cough.

She always coughed at the wrong times!

“Lex,” Tim whispered fiercely, looking back toward the shore.

She shook her head miserably, and pointed to her throat. He knew what she meant: a tickle in her throat. What she needed was a drink of water. Grant was rowing, and Tim leaned over the side of the raft and scooped his hand in the lagoon, holding his cupped hand toward her.

Lex coughed loudly, explosively. In Tim’s ears, the sound echoed across the water like a gunshot.

The tyrannosaur yawned lazily, and scratched behind its ear with its hind foot, just like a dog. It yawned again. It was groggy after its big meal, and it woke up slowly.

On the boat, Lex was making little gargling sounds.

“Lex, shut up!” Tim said.

“I can’t help it,” she whispered, and then she coughed again. Grant rowed hard, moving the raft powerfully into the center of the lagoon.

On the shore, the tyrannosaur stumbled to its feet.

“I couldn’t help it, Timmy!” Lex shrieked miserably. “I couldn’t help it!”

“Shhhh!”

Grant was rowing as fast as he could.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “We’re far enough away. He can’t swim.”

“Of course he can swim, you little idiot!” Tim shouted at her. On the shore, the tyrannosaur stepped off the dock and plunged into the water. It moved strongly into the lagoon after them.

“Well, how should I know?” she said.

“Everybody knows tyrannosaurs can swim! It’s in all the books! Anyway, all reptiles can swim!”

“Snakes can’t.”

“Of course snakes can. You idiot!”

“Settle down,” Grant said. “Hold on to something!” Grant was watching the tyrannosaur, noticing how the animal swam. The tyrannosaur was now chest-deep in the water, but it could hold its big head high above the surface. Then Grant realized the animal wasn’t swimming, it was walking, because moments later only the very top of the head—the eyes and nostrils—protruded above the surface. By then it looked like a crocodile, and it swam like a crocodile, swinging its big tail back and forth, so the water churned behind it. Behind the head, Grant saw the hump of the back, and the ridges along the length of tail, as it occasionally broke the surface.

Exactly like a crocodile, he thought unhappily. The biggest crocodile in the world.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Grant!” Lex wailed. “I didn’t mean it!”

Grant glanced over his shoulder. The lagoon was no more than a hundred yards wide here, and they had almost reached the center. If he continued, the water would become shallow again. The tyrannosaur would be able to walk again, and he would move faster in shallow water. Grant swung the boat around, and began to row north.

“What are you doing?”

The tyrannosaur was now just a few yards away. Grant could hear its sharp snorting breaths as it came closer. Grant looked at the paddles in his hands, but they were light plastic—not weapons at all.

The tyrannosaur threw its head back and opened its jaws wide, showing rows of curved teeth, and then in a great muscular spasm lunged forward to the raft, just missing the rubber gunwale, the huge skull slapping down, the raft rocking away on the crest of the splash.

The tyrannosaur sank below the surface, leaving gurgling bubbles. The lagoon was still. Lex gripped the gunwale handles and looked back.

“Did he drown?”

“No,” Grant said. He saw bubbles—then a faint ripple along the surface—coming toward the boat—

“Hang on!” he shouted, as the head bucked up beneath the rubber, bending the boat and lifting it into the air, spinning them crazily before it splashed down again.

“Do something!” Alexis screamed. “Do something!”

Grant pulled the air pistol out of his belt. It looked pitifully small in his hands, but there was the chance that, if he shot the animal in a sensitive spot, in the eye or the nose—

The tyrannosaur surfaced beside the boat, opened its jaws, and roared. Grant aimed, and fired. The dart flashed in the light, and smacked into the cheek. The tyrannosaur shook its head, and roared again.

And suddenly they heard an answering roar, floating across the water toward them.

Looking back, Grant saw the juvenile T-rex on the shore, crouched over the killed sauropod, claiming the kill as its own. The juvenile slashed at the carcass, then raised its head high and bellowed. The big tyrannosaur saw it, too, and the response was immediate—it turned back to protect its kill, swimming strongly toward the shore.

“He’s going away!” Lex squealed, clapping her hands. “He’s going away! Naah-naah-na-na-naah! Stupid dinosaur!”

From the shore, the juvenile roared defiantly. Enraged, the big tyrannosaur burst from the lagoon at full speed, water streaming from its enormous body as it raced up the hill past the dock. The juvenile ducked its head and fled, its jaws still filled with ragged flesh.

The big tyrannosaur chased it, racing past the dead sauropod, disappearing over the hill. They heard its final threatening bellow, and then the raft moved to the north, around a bend in the lagoon, to the river.

Exhausted from rowing, Grant collapsed back, his chest heaving. He couldn’t catch his breath. He lay gasping in the raft.

“Are you okay, Dr. Grant?” Lex asked.

“From now on, will you just do what I tell you?”

“Oh-kay,” she sighed, as if he had just made the most unreasonable demand in the world. She trailed her arm in the water for a while. “You stopped rowing,” she said.

“I’m tired,” Grant said.

“Then how come we’re still moving?”

Grant sat up. She was right. The raft drifted steadily north. “There must be a current.” The current was carrying them north, toward the hotel. He looked at his watch and was astonished to see it was fifteen minutes past seven. Only fifteen minutes had passed since he had last looked at his watch. It seemed like two hours.

Grant lay back against the rubber gunwales, closed his eyes, and slept.

FIFTH ITERATION

“Flaws in the system will now become severe.”

IAN MALCOLM

SEARCH

Gennaro sat in the Jeep and listened to the buzzing of the flies, and stared at the distant palm trees wavering in the heat. He was astonished by what looked like a battleground: the grass was trampled flat for a hundred yards in every direction. One big palm tree was uprooted from the ground. There were great washes of blood in the grass, and on the rocky outcropping to their right.

Sitting beside him, Muldoon said, “No doubt about it. Rexy’s been among the hadrosaurs.” He took another drink of whiskey, and capped the bottle. “Damn lot of flies,” he said.

They waited, and watched.

Gennaro drummed his fingers on the dashboard. “What are we waiting for?”

Muldoon didn’t answer immediately. “The rex is out there somewhere,” he said, squinting at the landscape in the morning sun. “And we don’t have any weapons worth a damn.”

“We’re in a Jeep.”

“Oh, he can outrun the Jeep, Mr. Gennaro,” Muldoon said, shaking his head. “Once we leave this road and go onto open terrain, the best we can do in a four-wheel drive is thirty, forty miles an hour. He’ll run us right down. No problem for him.” Muldoon sighed. “But I don’t see much moving out there now. You ready to live dangerously?”

“Sure,” Gennaro said.

Muldoon started the engine, and at the sudden sound, two small othnielians leapt up from the matted grass directly ahead. Muldoon put the car in gear. He drove in a wide circle around the trampled site, and then moved inward, driving in decreasing concentric circles until he finally came to the place in the field where the little othnielians had been. Then he got out and walked forward in the grass, away from the Jeep. He stopped as a dense cloud of flies lifted into the air.

“What is it?” Gennaro called.

“Bring the radio,” Muldoon said.

Gennaro climbed out of the Jeep and hurried forward. Even from a distance he could smell the sour-sweet odor of early decay. He saw a dark shape in the grass, crusted with blood, legs askew.

“Young hadrosaur,” Muldoon said, staring down at the carcass. “The whole herd stampeded, and the young one got separated, and the T-rex brought it down.”

“How do you know?” Gennaro said. The flesh was ragged from many bites.

“You can tell from the excreta,” Muldoon said. “See those chalky white bits there in the grass? That’s hadro spoor. Uric acid makes it white. But you look there”—he pointed to a large mound, rising knee-high in the grass—“that’s tyrannosaur spoor.”

“How do you know the tyrannosaur didn’t come later?”

“The bite pattern,” Muldoon said. “See those little ones there?” He pointed along the belly. “Those are from the othys. Those bites haven’t bled. They’re postmortem, from scavengers. Othys did that. But the hadro was brought down by a bite on the neck—you see the big slash there, above the shoulder blades—and that’s the T-rex, no question.”

Gennaro bent over the carcass, staring at the awkward, trampled limbs with a sense of unreality. Beside him, Muldoon flicked on his radio. “Control.”

“Yes,” John Arnold said, over the radio.

“We got another hadro dead. Juvenile.” Muldoon bent down among the flies and checked the skin on the sole of the right foot. A number was tattooed there. “Specimen is number HD/09.”

The radio crackled. “I’ve got something for you,” Arnold said.

“Oh? What’s that?”

“I found Nedry.”

The Jeep burst through the line of palm trees along the east road and came out into a narrower service road, leading toward the jungle river. It was hot in this area of the park, the jungle close and fetid around them. Muldoon was fiddling with the computer monitor in the Jeep, which now showed a map of the resort with overlaid grid lines. “They found him up on remote video,” he said. “Sector 1104 is just ahead.”

Farther up the road, Gennaro saw a concrete barrier, and the Jeep parked alongside it. “He must have taken the wrong turnoff,” Muldoon said. “The little bastard.”

“What’d he take?” Gennaro asked.

“Wu says fifteen embryos. Know what that’s worth?”

Gennaro shook his head.

“Somewhere between two and ten million,” Muldoon said. He shook his head. “Big stakes.”

As they came closer, Gennaro saw the body lying beside the car. The body was indistinct and green—but then green shapes scattered away, as the Jeep pulled to a stop.

“Compys,” Muldoon said. “The compys found him.”

A dozen procompsognathids, delicate little predators no larger than ducks, stood at the edge of the jungle, chittering excitedly as the men climbed out of the car.

Dennis Nedry lay on his back, the chubby boyish face now red and bloated. Flies buzzed around the gaping mouth and thick tongue. His body was mangled—the intestines torn open, one leg chewed through. Gennaro turned away quickly, to look at the little compys, which squatted on their hind legs a short distance away and watched the men curiously. The little dinosaurs had five-fingered hands, he noticed. They wiped their faces and chins, giving them an eerily human quality which—

“I’ll be damned,” Muldoon said. “Wasn’t the compys.”

“What?”

Muldoon was shaking his head. “See these blotches? On his shirt and his face? Smell that sweet smell like old, dried vomit?”

Gennaro rolled his eyes. He smelled it.

“That’s dilo saliva,” Muldoon said. “Spit from the dilophosaurs. You see the damage on the corneas, all that redness. In the eyes it’s painful but not fatal. You’ve got about two hours to wash it out with the antivenin; we keep it all around the park, just in case. Not that it mattered to this bastard. They blinded him, then ripped him down the middle. Not a nice way to go. Maybe there’s justice in the world after all.”

The procompsognathids squeaked and hopped up and down as Gennaro opened the back door and took out gray metal tubing and a stainless-steel case. “It’s all still there,” he said. He handed two dark cylinders to Gennaro.

“What’re these?” Gennaro said.

“Just what they look like,” Muldoon said. “Rockets.” As Gennaro backed away, he said, “Watch it—you don’t want to step in something.”

Gennaro stepped carefully over Nedry’s body. Muldoon carried the tubing to the other Jeep, and placed it in the back. He climbed behind the wheel. “Let’s go.”

“What about him?” Gennaro said, pointing to the body.

“What about him?” Muldoon said. “We’ve got things to do.” He put the car in gear. Looking back, Gennaro saw the compys resume their feeding. One jumped up and squatted on Nedry’s open mouth as it nibbled the flesh of his nose.

The jungle river became narrower. The banks closed in on both sides until the trees and foliage overhanging the banks met high above to block out the sun. Tim heard the cry of birds, and saw small chirping dinosaurs leaping among the branches. But mostly it was silent, the air hot and still beneath the canopy of trees.

Grant looked at his watch. It was eight o’clock.

They drifted along peacefully, among dappled patches of light. If anything, they seemed to be moving faster than before. Awake now, Grant lay on his back and stared up at the branches overhead. In the bow, he saw her reaching up.

“Hey, what’re you doing?” he said.

“You think we can eat these berries?” She pointed to the trees. Some of the overhanging branches were close enough to touch. Tim saw clusters of bright red berries on the branches.

“No,” Grant said.

“Why? Those little dinosaurs are eating them.” She pointed to small dinosaurs, scampering in the branches.

“No, Lex.”

She sighed, dissatisfied with his authority. “I wish Daddy was here,” she said. “Daddy always knows what to do.”

“What’re you talking about?” Tim said. “He never knows what to do.”

“Yes, he does,” she sighed. Lex stared at the trees as they slid past, their big roots twisting toward the water’s edge. “Just because you’re not his favorite …”

Tim turned away, said nothing.

“But don’t worry, Daddy likes you, too. Even if you’re into computers and not sports.”

“Dad’s a real sports nut,” Tim explained to Grant.

Grant nodded. Up in the branches, small pale yellow dinosaurs, barely two feet tall, hopped from tree to tree. They had beaky heads, like parrots. “You know what they call those?” Tim said. “Microceratops.”

“Big deal,” Lex said.

“I thought you might be interested.”

“Only very young boys,” she said, “are interested in dinosaurs.”

“Says who?”

“Daddy.”

Tim started to yell, but Grant raised his hand. “Kids,” he said, “shut up.”

“Why?” Lex said, “I can do what I want, if I—”

Then she fell silent, because she heard it, too. It was a bloodcurdling shriek, from somewhere downriver.

“Well, where the hell is the damn rex?” Muldoon said, talking into the radio. “Because we don’t see him here.” They were back at the sauropod compound, looking out at the trampled grass where the hadrosaurs had stampeded. The tyrannosaur was nowhere to be found.

“Checking now,” Arnold said, and clicked off.

Muldoon turned to Gennaro. “Checking now,” he repeated sarcastically. “Why the hell didn’t he check before? Why didn’t he keep track of him?”

“I don’t know,” Gennaro said.

“He’s not showing up,” Arnold said, a moment later.

“What do you mean, he’s not showing up?”

“He’s not on the monitors. Motion sensors aren’t finding him.”

“Hell,” Muldoon said. “So much for the motion sensors. You see Grant and the kids?”

“Motion sensors aren’t finding them, either.”

“Well, what are we supposed to do now?” Muldoon said.

“Wait,” Arnold said.

“Look! Look!”

Directly ahead, the big dome of the aviary rose above them. Grant had seen it only from a distance; now he realized it was enormous—a quarter of a mile in diameter or more. The pattern of geodesic struts shone dully through the light mist, and his first thought was that the glass must weigh a ton. Then, as they came closer, he saw there wasn’t any glass—just struts. A thin mesh hung inside the elements.

“It isn’t finished,” Lex said.

“I think it’s meant to be open like that,” Grant said.

“Then all the birds can fly out.”

“Not if they’re big birds,” Grant said.

The river carried them beneath the edge of the dome. They stared upward. Now they were inside the dome, still drifting down the river. But within minutes the dome was so high above them that it was hardly visible in the mist. Grant said, “I seem to remember there’s a second lodge here.” Moments later, he saw the roof of a building over the tops of the trees to the north.

“You want to stop?” Tim said.

“Maybe there’s a phone. Or motion sensors.” Grant steered toward the shore. “We need to try to contact the control room. It’s getting late.”

They clambered out, slipping on the muddy bank, and Grant hauled the raft out of the water. Then he tied the rope to a tree and they set off, through a dense forest of palm trees.

AVIARY

“I just don’t understand,” John Arnold said, speaking into the phone. “I don’t see the rex, and I don’t see Grant and the kids anywhere, either.”

He sat in front of the consoles and gulped another cup of coffee. All around him, the control room was strewn with paper plates and half-eaten sandwiches. Arnold was exhausted. It was 8:00 a.m. on Saturday. In the fourteen hours since Nedry destroyed the computer that ran Jurassic Park, Arnold had patiently pulled systems back on line, one after another. “All the park systems are back, and functioning correctly. The phones are working. I’ve called for a doctor for you.”

On the other end of the line, Malcolm coughed. Arnold was talking to him in his room at the lodge. “But you’re having trouble with the motion sensors?”

“Well, I’m not finding what I am looking for.”

“Like the rex?”

“He’s not reading at all now. He started north about twenty minutes ago, following along the edge of the lagoon, and then I lost him. I don’t know why, unless he’s gone to sleep again.”

“And you can’t find Grant and the kids?”

“No.”

“I think it’s quite simple,” Malcolm said. “The motion sensors cover an inadequate area.”

“Inadequate?” Arnold bristled. “They cover ninety-two—”

“Ninety-two percent of the land area, I remember,” Malcolm said. “But if you put the remaining areas up on the board, I think you’ll find that the eight percent is topologically unified, meaning that those areas are contiguous. In essence, an animal can move freely anywhere in the park and escape detection, by following a maintenance road or the jungle river or the beaches or whatever.”

“Even if that were so,” Arnold said, “the animals are too stupid to know that.”

“It’s not clear how stupid the animals are,” Malcolm said.

“You think that’s what Grant and the kids are doing?” Arnold said.

“Definitely not,” Malcolm said, coughing again. “Grant’s no fool. He clearly wants to be detected by you. He and the kids are probably waving at every motion sensor in sight. But maybe they have other problems we don’t know about. Or maybe they’re on the river.”

“I can’t imagine they’d be on the river. The banks are very narrow. It’s impossible to walk along there.”

“Would the river bring them all the way back here?”

“Yes, but it’s not the safest way to go, because it passes through the aviary.…”

“Why wasn’t the aviary on the tour?” Malcolm said.

“We’ve had problems setting it up. Originally the park was intended to have a treetop lodge built high above the ground, where visitors could observe the pterodactyls at flight level. We’ve got four dactyls in the aviary now—actually, they’re cearadactyls, which are big fish-eating dactyls.”

“What about them?”

“Well, while we finished the lodge, we put the dactyls in the aviary to acclimate them. But that was a big mistake. It turns out our fish-hunters are territorial.”

“Territorial?”

“Fiercely territorial,” Arnold said. “They fight among themselves for territory—and they’ll attack any other animal that comes into the area they’ve marked out.”

“Attack?”

“It’s impressive,” Arnold said. “The dactyls glide to the top of the aviary, fold up their wings, and dive. A thirty-pound animal will strike a man on the ground like a ton of bricks. They were knocking the workmen unconscious, cutting them up pretty badly.”

“That doesn’t injure the dactyls?”

“Not so far.”

“So, if those kids are in the aviary …”

“They’re not,” Arnold said. “At least, I hope they’re not.”

“Is that the lodge?” Lex said. “What a dump.”

Beneath the aviary dome, Pteratops Lodge was built high above the ground, on big wooden pylons, in the middle of a stand of fir trees. But the building was unfinished and unpainted; the windows were boarded up. The trees and the lodge were splattered with broad white streaks.

“I guess they didn’t finish it, for some reason,” Grant said, hiding his disappointment. He glanced at his watch. “Come on, let’s go back to the boat.”

The sun came out as they walked along, making the morning more cheerful. Grant looked at the latticework shadows on the ground from the dome above. He noticed that the ground and the foliage were spattered with broad streaks of the same white chalky substance that had been on the building. And there was a distinctive, sour odor in the morning air.

“Stinks here,” Lex said. “What’s all the white stuff?”

“Looks like reptile droppings. Probably from the birds.”

“How come they didn’t finish the lodge?”

“I don’t know.”

They entered a clearing of low grass, dotted with wild flowers. They heard a long, low whistle. Then an answering whistle, from across the forest.

“What’s that?”

“I don’t know.”

Then Grant saw the dark shadow of a cloud on the grassy field ahead. The shadow was moving fast. In moments, it had swept over them. He looked up and saw an enormous dark shape gliding above them, blotting out the sun.

“Yow!” Lex said. “Is it a pterodactyl?”

“Yes,” Tim said.

Grant didn’t answer. He was entranced by the sight of the huge flying creature. In the sky above, the pterodactyl gave a low whistle and wheeled gracefully, turning back toward them.

“How come they’re not on the tour?” Tim said.

Grant was wondering the same thing. The flying dinosaurs were so beautiful, so graceful as they moved through the air. As Grant watched, he saw a second pterodactyl appear in the sky, and a third, and a fourth.

“Maybe because they didn’t finish the lodge,” Lex said.

Grant was thinking these weren’t ordinary pterodactyls. They were too large. They must be cearadactyls, big flying reptiles from the early Cretaceous. When they were high, these looked like small airplanes. When they came lower, he could see the animals had fifteen-foot wingspans, furry bodies, and heads like crocodiles’. They ate fish, he remembered. South America and Mexico.

Lex shaded her eyes and looked up at the sky. “Can they hurt us?”

“I don’t think so. They eat fish.”

One of the dactyls spiraled down, a flashing dark shadow that whooshed past them with a rush of warm air and a lingering sour odor.

“Wow!” Lex said. “They’re really big.” And then she said, “Are you sure they can’t hurt us?”

“Pretty sure.”

A second dactyl swooped down, moving faster than the first. It came from behind, streaked over their heads. Grant had a glimpse of its toothy beak and the furry body. It looked like a huge bat, he thought. But Grant was impressed with the frail appearance of the animals. Their huge wingspans—the delicate pink membranes stretched across them—so thin they were translucent—everything reinforced the delicacy of the dactyls.

“Ow!” Lex shouted, grabbing her hair. “He bit me!”

“He what?” Grant said.

“He bit me! He bit me!” When she took her hand away, he saw blood on her fingers.

Up in the sky, two more dactyls folded their wings, collapsing into small dark shapes that plummeted toward the ground. They made a kind of scream as they hurtled downward.

“Come on!” Grant said, grabbing their hands. They ran across the meadow, hearing the approaching scream, and he flung himself on the ground at the last moment, pulling the kids down with him, as the two dactyls whistled and squeaked past them, flapping their wings. Grant felt claws tear the shirt along his back.

Then he was up, pulling Lex back onto her feet, and running with Tim a few feet forward while overhead two more birds wheeled and dove toward them, screaming. At the last moment, he pushed the kids to the ground, and the big shadows flapped past.

“Uck,” Lex said, disgusted. He saw that she was streaked with white droppings from the birds.

Grant scrambled to his feet. “Come on!”

He was about to run when Lex shrieked in terror. He turned back and saw that one of the dactyls had grabbed her by the shoulders with its hind claws. The animal’s huge leathery wings, translucent in the sunlight, flapped broadly on both sides of her. The dactyl was trying to take off, but Lex was too heavy, and while it struggled it repeatedly jabbed at her head with its long pointed jaw.

Lex was screaming, waving her arms wildly. Grant did the only thing he could think to do. He ran forward and jumped up, throwing himself against the body of the dactyl. He knocked it onto its back on the ground, and fell on top of the furry body. The animal screamed and snapped; Grant ducked his head away from the jaws and pushed back, as the giant wings beat around his body. It was like being in a tent in a windstorm. He couldn’t see; he couldn’t hear; there was nothing but the flapping and shrieking and the leathery membranes. The clawed legs scratched frantically at his chest. Lex was screaming. Grant pushed away from the dactyl and it squeaked and gibbered as it flapped its wings and struggled to turn over, to right itself. Finally it pulled in its wings like a bat and rolled over, lifted itself up on its little wing claws, and began to walk that way. He paused, astonished.

It could walk on its wings! Lederer’s speculation was right! But then the other dactyls were diving down at them and Grant was dizzy, off balance, and in horror he saw Lex run away, her arms over her head … Tim shouting at the top of his lungs.…

The first of them swooped down and she threw something and suddenly the dactyl whistled and climbed. The other dactyls immediately climbed and chased the first into the sky. The fourth dactyl flapped awkwardly into the air to join the others. Grant looked upward, squinting to see what had happened. The three dactyls chased the first, screaming angrily.

They were alone in the field.

“What happened?” Grant said.

“They got my glove,” Lex said. “My Darryl Strawberry special.”

They started walking again. Tim put his arm around her shoulders. “Are you all right?”

“Of course, stupid,” she said, shaking him off. She looked upward. “I hope they choke and die,” she said.

“Yeah,” Tim said. “Me, too.”

Up ahead, they saw the boat on the shore. Grant looked at his watch. It was eight-thirty. He now had two and a half hours to get back.

Lex cheered as they drifted beyond the silver aviary dome. Then the banks of the river closed in on both sides, the trees meeting overhead once more. The river was narrower than ever, in some places only ten feet wide, and the current flowed very fast. Lex reached up to touch the branches as they went past.

Grant sat back in the raft and listened to the gurgle of the water through the warm rubber. They were moving faster now, the branches overhead slipping by more rapidly. It was pleasant. It gave a little breeze in the hot confines of the overhanging branches. And it meant they would get back that much sooner.

Grant couldn’t guess how far they had come, but it must be several miles at least from the sauropod building where they had spent the night. Perhaps four or five miles. Maybe even more. That meant they might be only an hour’s walk from the hotel, once they left the raft. But after the aviary, Grant was in no hurry to leave the river again. For the moment, they were making good time.

“I wonder how Ralph is,” Lex said. “He’s probably dead or something.”

“I’m sure he’s fine.”

“I wonder if he’d let me ride him.” She sighed, sleepy in the sun.

“That would be fun, to ride Ralph.”

Tim said to Grant, “Remember back at the stegosaurus? Last night?”

“Yes.”

“How come you asked them about frog DNA?”

“Because of the breeding,” Grant said. “They can’t explain why the dinosaurs are breeding, since they irradiate them, and since they’re all females.”

“Right.”

“Well, irradiation is notoriously unreliable and probably doesn’t work. I think that’ll eventually be shown here. But there is still the problem of the dinosaurs’ being female. How can they breed when they’re all female?”

“Right,” Tim said.

“Well, across the animal kingdom, sexual reproduction exists in extraordinary variety.”

“Tim’s very interested in sex,” Lex said.

They both ignored her. “For example,” Grant said, “many animals have sexual reproduction without ever having what we would call sex. The male releases a spermatophore, which contains the sperm, and the female picks it up at a later time. This kind of exchange does not require quite as much physical differentiation between male and female as we usually think exists. Male and female are more alike in some animals than they are in human beings.”

Tim nodded. “But what about the frogs?”

Grant heard sudden shrieks from the trees above, as the microceratopsians scattered in alarm, shaking the branches. The big head of the tyrannosaur lunged through the foliage from the left, the jaws snapping at the raft. Lex howled in terror, and Grant paddled away toward the opposite bank, but the river here was only ten feet wide. The tyrannosaur was caught in the heavy growth; it butted and twisted its head, and roared. Then it pulled its head back.

Through the trees that lined the riverbank, they saw the huge dark form of the tyrannosaur, moving north, looking for a gap in the trees that lined the bank. The microceratopsians had all gone to the opposite bank, where they shrieked and scampered and jumped up and down. In the raft, Grant, Tim, and Lex stared helplessly as the tyrannosaur tried to break through again. But the trees were too dense along the banks of the river. The tyrannosaur again moved downstream, ahead of the boat, and tried again, shaking the branches furiously.

But again it failed.

Then it moved off, heading farther downstream.

“I hate him,” Lex said.

Grant sat back in the boat, badly shaken. If the tyrannosaur had broken through, there was nothing he could have done to save them. The river was so narrow that it was hardly wider than the raft. It was like being in a tunnel. The rubber gunwales often scraped on the mud as the boat was pulled along by the swift current.

He glanced at his watch. Almost nine. The raft continued down-stream.

“Hey,” Lex said, “listen!”

He heard snarling, interspersed by a repeated hooting cry. The cries were coming from beyond a curve, farther downriver. He listened, and heard the hooting again.

“What is it?” Lex said.

“I don’t know,” Grant said. “But there’s more than one of them.” He paddled the boat to the opposite bank, grabbed a branch to stop the raft. The snarling was repeated. Then more hooting.

“It sounds like a bunch of owls,” Tim said.

Malcolm groaned. “Isn’t it time for more morphine yet?”

“Not yet,” Ellie said.

Malcolm sighed. “How much water have we got here?”

“I don’t know. There’s plenty of running water from the tap—”

“No, I mean, how much stored? Any?”

Ellie shrugged. “None.”

“Go into the rooms on this floor,” Malcolm said, “and fill the bathtubs with water.”

Ellie frowned.

“Also,” Malcolm said, “have we got any walkie-talkies? Flashlights? Matches? Sterno stoves? Things like that?”

“I’ll look around. You planning for an earthquake?”

“Something like that,” Malcolm said. “Malcolm Effect implies catastrophic changes.”

“But Arnold says all the systems are working perfectly.”

“That’s when it happens,” Malcolm said.

Ellie said, “You don’t think much of Arnold, do you?”

“He’s all right. He’s an engineer. Wu’s the same. They’re both technicians. They don’t have intelligence. They have what I call ‘thintelligence.’ They see the immediate situation. They think narrowly and they call it ‘being focused.’ They don’t see the surround. They don’t see the consequences. That’s how you get an island like this. From thintelligent thinking. Because you cannot make an animal and not expect it to act alive. To be unpredictable. To escape. But they don’t see that.”

“Don’t you think it’s just human nature?” Ellie said.

“God, no,” Malcolm said. “That’s like saying scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast is human nature. It’s nothing of the sort. It’s uniquely Western training, and much of the rest of the world is nauseated by the thought of it.” He winced in pain. “The morphine’s making me philosophical.”

“You want some water?”

“No. I’ll tell you the problem with engineers and scientists. Scientists have an elaborate line of bullshit about how they are seeking to know the truth about nature. Which is true, but that’s not what drives them. Nobody is driven by abstractions like ‘seeking truth.’

“Scientists are actually preoccupied with accomplishment. So they are focused on whether they can do something. They never stop to ask if they should do something. They conveniently define such considerations as pointless. If they don’t do it, someone else will. Discovery, they believe, is inevitable. So they just try to do it first. That’s the game in science. Even pure scientific discovery is an aggressive, penetrative act. It takes big equipment, and it literally changes the world afterward. Particle accelerators scar the land, and leave radioactive byproducts. Astronauts leave trash on the moon. There is always some proof that scientists were there, making their discoveries. Discovery is always a rape of the natural world. Always.

“The scientists want it that way. They have to stick their instruments in. They have to leave their mark. They can’t just watch. They can’t just appreciate. They can’t just fit into the natural order. They have to make something unnatural happen. That is the scientist’s job, and now we have whole societies that try to be scientific.” He sighed, and sank back.

Ellie said, “Don’t you think you’re overstating—”

“What does one of your excavations look like a year later?”

“Pretty bad,” she admitted.

“You don’t replant, you don’t restore the land after you dig?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

She shrugged. “There’s no money, I guess.…”

“There’s only enough money to dig, but not to repair?”

“Well, we’re just working in the badlands.…”

“Just the badlands,” Malcolm said, shaking his head. “Just trash. Just byproducts. Just side effects… I’m trying to tell you that scientists want it this way. They want byproducts and trash and scars and side effects. It’s a way of reassuring themselves. It’s built into the fabric of science, and it’s increasingly a disaster.”

“Then what’s the answer?”

“Get rid of the thintelligent ones. Take them out of power.”

“But then we’d lose all the advances—”

“What advances?” Malcolm said irritably. “The number of hours women devote to housework has not changed since 1930, despite all the advances. All the vacuum cleaners, washer-dryers, trash compactors, garbage disposals, wash-and-wear fabrics … Why does it still take as long to clean the house as it did in 1930?”

Ellie said nothing.

“Because there haven’t been any advances,” Malcolm said. “Not really. Thirty thousand years ago; when men were doing cave paintings at Lascaux, they worked twenty hours a week to provide themselves with food and shelter and clothing. The rest of the time, they could play, or sleep, or do whatever they wanted. And they lived in a natural world, with clean air, clean water, beautiful trees and sunsets. Think about it. Twenty hours a week. Thirty thousand years ago.”

Ellie said, “You want to turn back the clock?”

“No,” Malcolm said. “I want people to wake up. We’ve had four hundred years of modern science, and we ought to know by now what it’s good for, and what it’s not good for. It’s time for a change.”

“Before we destroy the planet?” she said.

He sighed, and closed his eyes. “Oh dear,” he said. “That’s the last thing I would worry about.”

In the dark tunnel of the jungle river, Grant went hand over hand, holding branches, moving the raft cautiously forward. He still heard the sounds. And finally he saw the dinosaurs.

“Aren’t those the ones that are poison?”

“Yes,” Grant said. “Dilophosaurus.”

Standing on the riverbank were two dilophosaurs. The ten-foot-tall bodies were spotted yellow and black. Underneath, the bellies were bright green, like lizards. Twin red curving crests ran along the top of the head from the eyes to the nose, making a V shape above the head. The bird-like quality was reinforced by the way they moved, bending to drink from the river, then rising to snarl and hoot.

Lex whispered, “Should we get out and walk?”

Grant shook his head no. The dilophosaurs were smaller than the tyrannosaur, small enough to slip through the dense foliage at the banks of the river. And they seemed quick, as they snarled and hooted at each other.

“But we can’t get past them in the boat,” Lex said. “They’re poison.”

“We have to,” Grant said. “Somehow.”

The dilophosaurs continued to drink and hoot. They seemed to be interacting with each other in a strangely ritualistic, repetitive way. The animal on the left would bend to drink, opening its mouth to bare long rows of sharp teeth, and then it would hoot. The animal on the right would hoot in reply and bend to drink, in a mirror image of the first animal’s movements. Then the sequence would be repeated, exactly the same way.

Grant noticed that the animal on the right was smaller, with smaller spots on its back, and its crest was a duller red—

“I’ll be damned,” he said. “It’s a mating ritual.”

“Can we get past them?” Tim asked.

“Not the way they are now. They’re right by the edge of the water.” Grant knew animals often performed such mating rituals for hours at a time. They went without food, they paid attention to nothing else.… He glanced at his watch. Nine-twenty.

“What do we do?” Tim said.

Grant sighed. “I have no idea.”

He sat down in the raft, and then the dilophosaurs began to honk and roar repeatedly, in agitation. He looked up. The animals were both facing away from the river.

“What is it?” Lex said.

Grant smiled. “I think we’re finally getting some help.” He pushed off from the bank. “I want you two kids to lie flat on the rubber. We’ll go past as fast as we can. But just remember: whatever happens, don’t say anything, and don’t move. Okay?”

The raft began to drift downstream, toward the hooting dilophosaurs. It gained speed. Lex lay at Grant’s feet, staring at him with frightened eyes. They were coming closer to the dilophosaurs, which were still turned away from the river. But he pulled out his air pistol, checked the chamber.

The raft continued on, and they smelled a peculiar odor, sweet and nauseating at the same time. It smelled like dried vomit. The hooting of the dilophosaurs was louder. The raft came around a final bend and Grant caught his breath. The dilophosaurs were just a few feet away, honking at the trees beyond the river.

As Grant had suspected, they were honking at the tyrannosaur. The tyrannosaur was trying to break through the foliage, and the dilos hooted and stomped their feet in the mud. The raft drifted past them. The smell was nauseating. The tyrannosaur roared, probably because it saw the raft. But in another moment…

A thump.

The raft stopped moving. They were aground, against the riverbank, just a few feet downstream from the dilophosaurs.

Lex whispered, “Oh, great.”

There was a long slow scraping sound of the raft against the mud. Then the raft was moving again. They were going down the river. The tyrannosaur roared a final time and moved off; one dilophosaur looked surprised, then hooted. The other dilophosaur hooted in reply.

The raft floated downriver.

TYRANNOSAUR

The Jeep bounced along in the glaring sun. Muldoon was driving, with Gennaro at his side. They were in an open field, moving away from the dense line of foliage and palm trees that marked the course of the river, a hundred yards to the east. They came to a rise, and Muldoon stopped the car.

“Christ, it’s hot,” he said, wiping his forehead with the back of his arm. He drank from the bottle of whiskey between his knees, then offered it to Gennaro.

Gennaro shook his head. He stared at the landscape shimmering in the morning heat. Then he looked down at the onboard computer and video monitor mounted in the dashboard. The monitor showed views of the park from remote cameras. Still no sign of Grant and the children. Or of the tyrannosaur.

The radio crackled. “Muldoon.”

Muldoon picked up the handset. “Yeah.”

“You got your onboards? I found the rex. He’s in grid 442. Going to 443.”

“Just a minute,” Muldoon said, adjusting the monitor. “Yeah. I got him now. Following the river.” The animal was slinking along the foliage that lined the banks of the river, going north.

“Take it easy with him. Just immobilize him.”

“Don’t worry,” Muldoon said, squinting in the sun. “I won’t hurt him.”

“Remember,” Arnold said, “the tyrannosaur’s our main tourist attraction.”

Muldoon turned off his radio with a crackle of static. “Bloody fool,” he said. “They’re still talking about tourists.” Muldoon started the engine. “Let’s go see Rexy and give him a dose.”

The Jeep jolted over the terrain.

“You’re looking forward to this,” Gennaro said.

“I’ve wanted to put a needle in this big bastard for a while,” Muldoon said. “And there he is.”

They came to a wrenching stop. Through the windshield, Gennaro saw the tyrannosaur directly ahead of them, moving among the palm trees along the river.

Muldoon drained the whiskey bottle and threw it in the backseat. He reached back for his tubing. Gennaro looked at the video monitor, which showed their Jeep and the tyrannosaur. There must be a closed-circuit camera in the trees somewhere behind.

“You want to help,” Muldoon said, “you can break out those canisters by your feet.”

Gennaro bent over and opened a stainless-steel Halliburton case. It was padded inside with foam. Four cylinders, each the size of a quart milk bottle, were nestled in the foam. They were all labeled MORO-709. He took one out.

“You snap off the tip and screw on a needle,” Muldoon explained.

Gennaro found a plastic package of large needles, each the diameter of his fingertip. He screwed one onto the canister. The opposite end of the canister had a circular lead weight.

“That’s the plunger. Compresses on impact.” Muldoon sat forward with the air rifle across his knees. It was made of heavy gray tubular metal and looked to Gennaro like a bazooka or a rocket launcher.

“What’s MORO-709?”

“Standard animal trank,” Muldoon said. “Zoos around the world use it. We’ll try a thousand cc’s to start.” Muldoon cracked open the chamber, which was large enough to insert his fist. He slipped the canister into the chamber and closed it.

“That should do it,” Muldoon said. “Standard elephant gets about two hundred cc’s, but they’re only two or three tons each. Tyrannosaurus rex is eight tons, and a lot meaner. That matters to the dose.”

“Why?”

“Animal dose is partly body weight and partly temperament. You shoot the same dose of 709 into an elephant, a hippo, and a rhino—you’ll immobilize the elephant, so it just stands there like a statue. You’ll slow down the hippo, so it gets kind of sleepy but it keeps moving. And the rhino will just get fighting mad. But, on the other hand, you chase a rhino for more than five minutes in a car and he’ll drop dead from adrenaline shock. Strange combination of tough and delicate.”

Muldoon drove slowly toward the river, moving closer to the tyrannosaur. “But those are all mammals. We know a lot about handling mammals, because zoos are built around the big mammalian attractions—lions, tigers, bears, elephants. We know a lot less about reptiles. And nobody knows anything about dinosaurs. The dinosaurs are new animals.”

“You consider them reptiles?” Gennaro said.

“No,” Muldoon said, shifting gears. “Dinosaurs don’t fit existing categories.” He swerved to avoid a rock. “Actually, what we find is, the dinosaurs were as variable as mammals are today. Some dinos are tame and cute, and some are mean and nasty. Some of them see well, and some of them don’t. Some of them are stupid, and some of them are very, very intelligent.”

“Like the raptors?” Gennaro said.

Muldoon nodded. “Raptors are smart. Very smart. Believe me, all the problems we have so far,” he said, “are nothing compared with what we’d have if the raptors ever got out of their holding pen. Ah. I think this is as close as we can get to our Rexy.”

Up ahead, the tyrannosaur was poking its head through the branches, peering toward the river. Trying to get through. Then the animal moved a few yards downstream, to try again.

“Wonder what he sees in there?” Gennaro said.

“Hard to know,” Muldoon said. “Maybe he’s trying to get to the microceratopsians that scramble around in the branches. They’ll run him a merry chase.”

Muldoon stopped the Jeep about fifty yards away from the tyrannosaur, and turned the vehicle around. He left the motor running. “Get behind the wheel,” Muldoon said. “And put your seat belt on.” He took another canister and hooked it onto his shirt. Then he got out.

Gennaro slid behind the wheel. “You done this very often before?”

Muldoon belched. “Never. I’ll try to get him just behind the auditory meatus. We’ll see how it goes from there.” He walked ten yards behind the Jeep and crouched down in the grass on one knee. He steadied the big gun against his shoulder, and flipped up the thick telescopic sight. Muldoon aimed at the tyrannosaur, which still ignored them.

There was a burst of pale gas, and Gennaro saw a white streak shoot forward in the air toward the tyrannosaur. But nothing seemed to happen.

Then the tyrannosaur turned slowly, curiously, to peer at them. It moved its head from side to side, as if looking at them with alternate eyes.

Muldoon had taken down the launcher, and was loading the second canister.

“You hit him?” Gennaro said.

Muldoon shook his head. “Missed. Damn laser sights … See if there’s a battery in the case.”

“A what?” Gennaro said.

“A battery,” Muldoon said. “It’s about as big as your finger. Gray markings.”

Gennaro bent over to look in the steel case. He felt the vibration of the Jeep, heard the motor ticking over. He didn’t see a battery. The tyrannosaur roared. To Gennaro it was a terrifying sound, rumbling from the great chest cavity of the animal, bellowing out over the landscape. He sat up sharply and reached for the steering wheel, put his hand on the gearshift. On the radio, he heard a voice say, “Muldoon. This is Arnold. Get out of there. Over.”

“I know what I’m doing,” Muldoon said.

The tyrannosaur charged.

Muldoon stood his ground. Despite the creature racing toward him, he slowly and methodically raised his launcher, aimed, and fired. Once again, Gennaro saw the puff of smoke, and the white streak of the canister going toward the animal.

Nothing happened. The tyrannosaur continued to charge.

Now Muldoon was on his feet and running, shouting, “Go! Go!” Gennaro put the Jeep in gear and Muldoon threw himself onto the side door as the Jeep lurched forward. The tyrannosaur was closing rapidly, and Muldoon swung the door open and climbed inside.

“Go, damn it! Go!”

Gennaro floored it. The Jeep bounced precariously, the front end nosing so high they saw only sky through the windshield, then slamming down again toward the ground and racing forward again. Gennaro headed for a stand of trees to the left until, in the rearview mirror, he saw the tyrannosaur give a final roar and turn away.

Gennaro slowed the car. “Jesus.”

Muldoon was shaking his head. “I could have sworn I hit him the second time.”

“I’d say you missed,” Gennaro said.

“Needle must have broken off before the plunger injected.”

“Admit it, you missed.”

“Yeah,” Muldoon said. He sighed. “I missed. Battery was dead in the damned laser sights. My fault. I should have checked it, after it was out all last night. Let’s go back and get more canisters.”

The Jeep headed north, toward the hotel. Muldoon picked up the radio. “Control.”

“Yes,” Arnold said.

“We’re heading back to base.”

The river was now very narrow, and flowing swiftly. The raft was going faster all the time. It was starting to feel like an amusement park ride.

“Whee!” Lex yelled, holding on to the gunwale. “Faster, faster!”

Grant squinted, looking forward. The river was still narrow and dark, but farther ahead he could see the trees ended, and there was bright sunlight beyond, and a distant roaring sound. The river seemed to end abruptly in a peculiar flat line.…

The raft was going still faster, rushing forward.

Grant grabbed for his paddles.

“What is it?”

“It’s a waterfall,” Grant said.

The raft swept out of the overhanging darkness into brilliant morning sunlight, and raced forward on the swift current toward the lip of the waterfall. The roar was loud in their ears. Grant paddled as strongly as he could, but he only succeeded in spinning the boat in circles. It continued inexorably toward the lip.

Lex leaned toward him. “I can’t swim!” Grant saw that she did not have her life vest clasped, but there was nothing he could do about it; with frightening speed, they came to the edge, and the roar of the waterfall seemed to fill the world. Grant jammed his oar deep into the water, felt it catch and hold, right at the lip; the rubber raft shuddered in the current, but they did not go over. Grant strained against the oar and, looking over the edge, saw the sheer drop of fifty feet down to the surging pool below.

And standing in the surging pool, waiting for them, was the tyrannosaur.

Lex was screaming in panic, and then the boat spun, and the rear end dropped away, spilling them out into air and roaring water, and they fell sickeningly. Grant flailed his arms in the air, and the world went suddenly silent and slow.

It seemed to him he fell for long minutes; he had time to observe Lex, clutching her orange jacket, falling alongside him; he had time to observe Tim, looking down at the bottom; he had time to observe the frozen white sheet of the waterfall; he had time to observe the bubbling pool beneath him as he fell slowly, silently toward it.

Then, with a stinging slap, Grant plunged into cold water, surrounded by white boiling bubbles. He tumbled and spun and glimpsed the leg of the tyrannosaur as he was swirled past it, swept down through the pool and out into the stream beyond. Grant swam for the shore, clutched warm rocks, slipped off, caught a branch, and finally pulled himself out of the main current. Gasping, he dragged himself on his belly onto the rocks, and looked at the river just in time to see the brown rubber raft tumble past him. Then he saw Tim, battling the current, and he reached out and pulled him, coughing and shivering, onto the shore beside him.

Grant turned back to the waterfall, and saw the tyrannosaur plunge its head straight down into the water of the pool at his feet. The great head shook, splashing water to either side. It had something between its teeth.

And then the tyrannosaur lifted its head back up.

Dangling from the jaws was Lex’s orange life vest.

A moment later, Lex bobbed to the surface beside the dinosaur’s long tail. She lay facedown in the water, her little body swept downstream by the current. Grant plunged into the water after her, was again immersed in the churning torrent. A moment later, he pulled her up onto the rocks, a heavy, lifeless weight. Her face was gray. Water poured from her mouth.

Grant bent over her to give her mouth-to-mouth but she coughed. Then she vomited yellow-green liquid and coughed again. Her eyelids fluttered. “Hi,” she said. She smiled weakly. “We did it.”

Tim started to cry. She coughed again. “Will you stop it? What’re you crying for?”

“Because.”

“We were worried about you,” Grant said. Small flecks of white were drifting down the river. The tyrannosaur was tearing up the life vest. Still turned away from them, facing the waterfall. But at any minute the animal might turn and see them.… “Come on, kids,” he said.

“Where are we going?” Lex said, coughing.

“Come on.” He was looking for a hiding place. Downstream he saw only an open grassy plain, affording no protection. Upstream was the dinosaur. Then Grant saw a dirt path by the river. It seemed to lead up toward the waterfall.

And in the dirt he saw the clear imprint of a man’s shoe. Leading up the path.

The tyrannosaur finally turned around, growling and looking out toward the grassy plain. It seemed to have figured out that they had gotten away. It was looking for them downstream. Grant and the kids ducked among the big ferns that lined the riverbanks. Cautiously, he led them upstream. “Where are we going?” Lex said. “We’re going back.”

“I know.”

They were closer to the waterfall now, the roar much louder. The rocks became slippery, the path muddy. There was a constant hanging mist. It was like moving through a cloud. The path seemed to lead right into the rushing water, but as they came closer, they saw that it actually went behind the waterfall.

The tyrannosaur was still looking downstream, its back turned to them. They hurried along the path to the waterfall, and had almost moved behind the sheet of falling water when Grant saw the tyrannosaur turn. Then they were completely behind the waterfall, and Grant was unable to see out through the silver sheet.

Grant looked around in surprise. There was a little recess here, hardly larger than a closet, and filled with machinery: humming pumps and big filters and pipes. Everything was wet, and cold.

“Did he see us?” Lex said. She had to shout over the noise of the falling water. “Where are we? What is this place? Did he see us?”

“Just a minute,” Grant said. He was looking at the equipment. This was clearly park machinery. And there must be electricity to run it, so perhaps there was also a telephone for communication. He poked among the filters and pipes.

“What are you doing?” Lex shouted.

“Looking for a telephone.” It was now nearly 10:00 a.m. They had just a little more than an hour to contact the ship before it reached the mainland.

In the back of the recess he found a metal door marked MAINT 04, but it was firmly locked. Next to it was a slot for a security card. Alongside the door he saw a row of metal boxes. He opened the boxes one after another, but they contained only switches and timers. No telephone. And nothing to open the door.

He almost missed the box to the left of the door. On opening it, he found a nine-button keypad, covered with spots of green mold. But it looked as if it was a way to open the door, and he had the feeling that on the other side of that door was a phone. Scratched in the metal of the box was the number 1023. He punched it in.

With a hiss, the door came open. Gaping darkness beyond, concrete steps leading downward. On the back wall he saw stenciled MAINT VEHICLE 04/22 CHARGER and an arrow pointing down the stairs. Could it really mean there was a car? “Come on, kids.”

“Forget it,” Lex said. “I’m not going in there.”

“Come on, Lex,” Tim said.

“Forget it,” Lex said. “There’s no lights or anything. I’m not going.”

“Never mind,” Grant said. There wasn’t time to argue. “Stay here, and I’ll be right back.”

“Where’re you going?” Lex said, suddenly alarmed.

Grant stepped through the door. It gave an electronic beep, and snapped shut behind him, on a spring.

Grant was plunged into total darkness. After a moment of surprise, he turned to the door and felt its damp surface. There was no knob, no latch. He turned to the walls on either side of the door, feeling for a switch, a control box, anything at all.…

There was nothing.

He was fighting panic when his fingers closed over a cold metal cylinder. He ran his hands over a swelling edge, a flat surface … a flashlight! He clicked it on, and the beam was surprisingly bright. He looked back at the door, but saw that it would not open. He would have to wait for the kids to unlock it. Meantime …

He started for the steps. They were damp and slippery with mold, and he went down carefully. Partway down the stairs, he heard a sniffing and the sound of claws scratching on concrete. He took out his dart pistol, and proceeded cautiously.

The steps bent around the corner, and as he shone his light, an odd reflection glinted back, and then, a moment later, he saw it: a car! It was an electric car, like a golf cart, and it faced a long tunnel that seemed to stretch away for miles. A bright red light glowed by the steering wheel of the car, so perhaps it was charged.

Grant heard the sniffing again, and he wheeled and saw a pale shape rise up toward him, leaping through the air, its jaws open, and without thinking Grant fired. The animal landed on him, knocking him down, and he rolled away in fright, his flashlight swinging wildly. But the animal didn’t get up, and he felt foolish when he saw it.

It was a velociraptor, but very young, less than a year old. It was about two feet tall, the size of a medium dog, and it lay on the ground, breathing shallowly, the dart sticking from beneath its jaw. There was probably too much anesthetic for its body weight, and Grant pulled the dart out quickly. The velociraptor looked at him with slightly glazed eyes.

Grant had a clear feeling of intelligence from this creature, a kind of softness which contrasted strangely with the menace he had felt from the adults in the pen. He stroked the head of the velociraptor, hoping to calm it. He looked down at the body, which was shivering slightly as the tranquilizer took hold. And then he saw it was a male.

A young juvenile, and a male. There was no question what he was seeing. This velociraptor had been bred in the wild.

Excited by this development, he hurried back up the stairs to the door. With his flashlight, he scanned the flat, featureless surface of the door, and the interior walls. As he ran his hands over the door, it slowly dawned on him that he was locked inside, and unable to open it, unless the kids had the presence of mind to open it for him. He could hear them, faintly, on the other side of the door.

“Dr. Grant!” Lex shouted, pounding the door. “Dr. Grant!”

“Take it easy,” Tim said. “He’ll be back.”

“But where did he go?”

“Listen, Dr. Grant knows what he’s doing,” Tim said. “He’ll be back in a minute.”

“He should come back now,” Lex said. She bunched her fists on her hips, pushed her elbows wide. She stamped her foot angrily.

And then, with a roar, the tyrannosaur’s head burst through the waterfall toward them.

Tim stared in horror as the big mouth gaped wide. Lex shrieked and threw herself on the ground. The head swung back and forth, and pulled out again. But Tim could see the shadow of the animal’s head on the sheet of falling water.

He pulled Lex deeper into the recess, just as the jaws burst through again, roaring, the thick tongue flicking in and out rapidly. Water sprayed in all directions from the head. Then it pulled out again.

Lex huddled next to Tim, shivering. “I hate him,” she said. She huddled back, but the recess was only a few feet deep, and crammed with machinery. There wasn’t any place for them to hide.

The head came through the water again, but slowly this time, and the jaw came to rest on the ground. The tyrannosaur snorted, flaring its nostrils, breathing the air. But the eyes were still outside the sheet of water.

Tim thought: He can’t see us. He knows we’re in here, but he can’t see through the water.

The tyrannosaur sniffed.

“What is he doing?” Lex said again.

“Sshhhh.”

With a low growl, the jaws slowly opened, and the tongue snaked out. It was thick and blue-black, with a little forked indentation at the tip. It was four feet long, and easily reached back to the far wall of the recess. The tongue slid with a rasping scrape over the filter cylinders. Tim and Lex pressed back against the pipes.

The tongue moved slowly to the left, then to the right, slapping wetly against the machinery. The tip curled around the pipes and valves, sensing them. Tim saw that the tongue had muscular movements, like an elephant’s trunk. The tongue drew back along the right side of the recess. It dragged against Lex’s legs.

“Eeww,” Lex said.

The tongue stopped. It curled, then began to rise like a snake up the side of her body—

“Don’t move,” Tim whispered.

… past her face, then up along Tim’s shoulder, and finally wrapping around his head. Tim squeezed his eyes shut as the slimy muscle covered his face. It was hot and wet and it stunk like urine.

Wrapped around him, the tongue began to drag him, very slowly, toward the open jaws.

“Timmy …”

Tim couldn’t answer; his mouth was covered by the flat black tongue. He could see, but he couldn’t talk. Lex tugged at his hand.

“Come on, Timmy!”

The tongue dragged him toward the snorting mouth. He felt the hot panting breath on his legs. Lex was tugging at him but she was no match for the muscular power that held him. Tim let go of her and pressed the tongue with both hands, trying to shove it over his head. He couldn’t move it. He dug his heels into the muddy ground but he was dragged forward anyway.

Lex had wrapped her arms around his waist and was pulling backward, shouting to him, but he was powerless to do anything. He was beginning to see stars. A kind of peacefulness overcame him, a sense of peaceful inevitability as he was dragged along.

“Timmy?”

And then suddenly the tongue relaxed, and uncoiled. Tim felt it slipping off his face. His body was covered in disgusting white foamy slime, and the tongue fell limply to the ground. The jaws slapped shut, biting down on the tongue. Dark blood gushed out, mixing with the mud. The nostrils still snorted in ragged breaths.

“What’s he doing?” Lex cried.

And then slowly, very slowly, the head began to slide backward, out of the recess, leaving a long scrape in the mud. And finally it disappeared entirely, and they could see only the silver sheet of falling water.

CONTROL

“Okay,” Arnold said, in the control room. “The rex is down.” He pushed back in his chair, and grinned as he lit a final cigarette and crumpled the pack. That did it: the final step in putting the park back in order. Now all they had to do was go out and move it.

“Son of a bitch,” Muldoon said, looking at the monitor. “I got him after all.” He turned to Gennaro. “It just took him an hour to feel it.”

Henry Wu frowned at the screen. “But he could drown, in that position.…”

“He won’t drown,” Muldoon said. “Never seen an animal that was harder to kill.”

“I think we have to go out and move him,” Arnold said.

“We will,” Muldoon said. He didn’t sound enthusiastic.

“That’s a valuable animal.”

“I know it’s a valuable animal,” Muldoon said.

Arnold turned to Gennaro. He couldn’t resist a moment of triumph. “I’d point out to you,” he said, “that the park is now completely back to normal. Whatever Malcolm’s mathematical model said was going to happen. We are completely under control again.”

Gennaro pointed to the screen behind Arnold’s head and said, “What’s that?”

Arnold turned. It was the system status box, in the upper corner of the screen. Ordinarily it was empty. Arnold was surprised to see that it was now blinking yellow: AUX PWR LOW. For a moment, he didn’t understand. Why should auxiliary power be low? They were running on main power, not auxiliary power. He thought perhaps it was just a routine status check on the auxiliary power, perhaps a check on the fuel tank levels or the battery charge.…

“Henry,” Arnold said to Wu. “Look at this.”

Wu said, “Why are you running on auxiliary power?”

“I’m not,” Arnold said.

“It looks like you are.”

“I can’t be.”

“Print the system status log,” Wu said. The log was a record of the system over the last few hours.

Arnold pressed a button, and they heard the hum of a printer in the corner. Wu walked over to it.

Arnold stared at the screen. The box now turned from flashing yellow to red, and the message now read: AUX PWR FAIL.

Numbers began to count backward from twenty.

“What the hell is going on?” Arnold said.

Cautiously, Tim moved a few yards out along the muddy path, into the sunshine. He peered around the waterfall, and saw the tyrannosaur lying on its side, floating in the pool of water below.

“I hope he’s dead,” Lex said.

Tim could see he wasn’t: the dinosaur’s chest was still moving, and one forearm twitched in spasms. But something was wrong with him. Then Tim saw the white canister sticking in the back of the head, by the indentation of the ear.

“He’s been shot with a dart,” Tim said.

“Good,” Lex said. “He practically ate us.”

Tim watched the labored breathing. He felt unexpectedly distressed to see the huge animal humbled like this. He didn’t want it to die. “It’s not his fault,” he said.

“Oh sure,” Lex said. “He practically ate us and it’s not his fault.”

“He’s a carnivore. He was just doing what he does.”

“You wouldn’t say that,” Lex said, “if you were in his stomach right now.”

Then the sound of the waterfall changed. From a deafening roar, it became softer, quieter. The thundering sheet of water thinned, became a trickle …

And stopped.

“Timmy. The waterfall stopped,” Lex said.

It was now just dripping like a tap that wasn’t completely turned off. The pool at the base of the waterfall was still. They stood near the top, in the cave-like indentation filled with machinery, looking down.

“Waterfalls aren’t supposed to stop,” Lex said.

Tim shook his head. “It must be the power.… Somebody turned off the power.” Behind them, all the pumps and filters were shutting down one after another, the lights blinking off, and the machinery becoming quiet. And then there was the thunk of a solenoid releasing, and the door marked MAINT 04 swung slowly open.

Grant stepped out, blinking in the light, and said, “Good work, kids. You got the door open.”

“We didn’t do anything,” Lex said.

“The power went out,” Tim said.

“Never mind that,” Grant said. “Come and see what I’ve found.”

Arnold stared in shock.

One after another, the monitors went black, and then the room lights went out, plunging the control room into darkness and confusion. Everyone started yelling at once. Muldoon opened the blinds and let light in, and Wu brought over the printout.

“Look at this,” Wu said.

Wu said, “You shut down at five-thirteen this morning, and when you started back up, you started with auxiliary power.”

“Jesus,” Arnold said. Apparently, main power had not been on since shutdown. When he powered back up, only the auxiliary power came on. Arnold was thinking that was strange, when he suddenly realized that that was normal. That was what was supposed to happen. It made perfect sense: the auxiliary generator fired up first, and it was used to turn on the main generator, because it took a heavy charge to start the main power generator. That was the way the system was designed.

But Arnold had never before had occasion to turn the main power off. And when the lights and screens came back on in the control room, it never occurred to him that main power hadn’t also been restored.

But it hadn’t, and all during the time since then, while they were looking for the rex, and doing one thing and another, the park had been running on auxiliary power. And that wasn’t a good idea. In fact, the implications were just beginning to hit him—

“What does this line mean?” Muldoon said, pointing to the list.

05:14:57 Warning: Fence Status [NB] Operative - Aux Power [AV09]

“It means a system status warning was sent to the monitors in the control room,” Arnold said. “Concerning the fences.”

“Did you see that warning?”

Arnold shook his head. “No. I must have been talking to you in the field. Anyway, no, I didn’t see it.”

“What does it mean, ‘Warning: Fence Status’?”

“Well, I didn’t know it at the time, but we were running on backup power,” Arnold said. “And backup doesn’t generate enough amperage to power the electrified fences, so they were automatically kept off.”

Muldoon scowled. “The electrified fences were off?”

“Yes.”

“All of them? Since five this morning? For the last five hours?”

“Yes.”

“Including the velociraptor fences?”

Arnold sighed. “Yes.”

“Jesus Christ,” Muldoon said. “Five hours. Those animals could be out.”

And then, from somewhere in the distance, they heard a scream. Muldoon began to talk very fast. He went around the room, handing out the portable radios.

“Mr. Arnold is going to the maintenance shed to turn on main power. Dr. Wu, stay in the control room. You’re the only other one who can work the computers. Mr. Hammond, go back to the lodge. Don’t argue with me. Go now. Lock the gates, and stay behind them until you hear from me. I’ll help Arnold deal with the raptors.” He turned to Gennaro. “Like to live dangerously again?”

“Not really,” Gennaro said. He was very pale.

“Fine. Then go with the others to the lodge.” Muldoon turned away. “That’s it, everybody. Now move.”

Hammond whined, “But what are you going to do to my animals?”

“That’s not really the question, Mr. Hammond,” Muldoon said. “The question is, what are they going to do to us?”

He went through the door, and hurried down the hall toward his office. Gennaro fell into step alongside him. “Change your mind?” Muldoon growled.

“You’ll need help,” Gennaro said.

“I might.” Muldoon went into the room marked ANIMAL SUPERVISOR, picked up the gray shoulder launcher, and unlocked a panel in the wall behind his desk. There were six cylinders and six canisters.

“The thing about these damn dinos,” Muldoon said, “is that they have distributed nervous systems. They don’t die fast, even with a direct hit to the brain. And they’re built solidly; thick ribs make a shot to the heart dicey, and they’re difficult to cripple in the legs or hindquarters. Slow bleeders, slow to die.” He was opening the cylinders one after another and dropping in the canisters. He tossed a thick webbed belt to Gennaro. “Put that on.”

Gennaro tightened the belt, and Muldoon passed him the shells. “About all we can hope to do is blow them apart. Unfortunately we’ve only got six shells here. There’s eight raptors in that fenced compound. Let’s go. Stay close. You have the shells.”

Muldoon went out and ran along the hallway, looking down over the balcony to the path leading toward the maintenance shed. Gennaro was puffing alongside him. They got to the ground floor and went out through the glass doors, and Muldoon stopped.

Arnold was standing with his back to the maintenance shed. Three raptors approached him. Arnold had picked up a stick, and he was waving it at them, shouting. The raptors fanned out as they came closer, one staying in the center, the other two moving to each side. Coordinated. Smooth. Gennaro shivered.

Pack behavior.

Muldoon was already crouching, setting the launcher on his shoulder. “Load,” he said. Gennaro slipped the shell in the back of the launcher. There was an electric sizzle. Nothing happened. “Christ, you’ve got it in backward,” Muldoon said, tilting the barrel so the shell fell into Gennaro’s hands. Gennaro loaded again. The raptors were snarling at Arnold when the animal on the left simply exploded, the upper part of the torso flying into the air, blood spattering like a burst tomato on the walls of the building. The lower torso collapsed on the ground, the legs kicking in the air, the tail flopping.

“That’ll wake ’em up,” Muldoon said.

Arnold ran for the door of the maintenance shed. The velociraptors turned, and started toward Muldoon and Gennaro. They fanned out as they came closer. In the distance, somewhere near the lodge, he heard screams.

Gennaro said, “This could be a disaster.”

“Load,” Muldoon said.

Henry Wu heard the explosions and looked toward the door of the control room. He circled around the consoles, then paused. He wanted to go out, but he knew he should stay in the room. If Arnold was able to get the power back on—if only for a minute—then Wu could restart the main generator.

He had to stay in the room.

He heard someone screaming. It sounded like Muldoon.

Muldoon felt a wrenching pain in his ankle, tumbled down an embankment, and hit the ground running. Looking back, he saw Gennaro running in the other direction, into the forest. The raptors were ignoring Gennaro but pursuing Muldoon. They were now less than twenty yards away. Muldoon screamed at the top of his lungs as he ran, wondering vaguely where the hell he could go. Because he knew he had perhaps ten seconds before they got him.

Ten seconds.

Maybe less.

Ellie had to help Malcolm turn over as Harding jabbed the needle and injected morphine. Malcolm sighed and collapsed back. It seemed he was growing weaker by the minute. Over the radio, they heard tinny screaming, and muffled explosions coming from the visitor center.

Hammond came into the room and said, “How is he?”

“He’s holding,” Harding said. “A bit delirious.”

“I am nothing of the sort,” Malcolm said. “I am utterly clear.” They listened to the radio. “It sounds like a war out there.”

“The raptors got out,” Hammond said.

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

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

“Did they.”

“Go to hell, you supercilious bastard.”

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

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

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

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

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

He sank back, coughing.

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

Hammond said, “What is he talking about?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ellie nodded.

“I haven’t a clue,” Hammond said.

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

“It was simple,” Hammond insisted.

“Then why did it go wrong?”

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

The catwalk.

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

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

Darkness.

The light was gone.

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

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

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

“Wu!” The radio hissed.

He grabbed for it. “Yes. I’m here.”

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

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

“I think Arnold made it to the shed,” Muldoon said. “After that, I don’t know.”

“Where are you?” Wu said.

“I’m stuffed.”

“What?”

“Stuffed in a bloody pipe,” Muldoon said. “And I’m very popular at the moment.”

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

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

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

“Yes, very popular,” he said into the radio.

Wu said, “Does Arnold have a radio?”

“Don’t think so,” Muldoon said. “Just sit tight. Wait it out.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was a dull thump behind him.

Arnold turned.

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

It had jumped down.

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

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

Wu said, “Four, five minutes.”

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

“No,” Wu said.

“We heard from Gennaro?”

Gennaro pressed the button. “I’m here.”

“Where the hell are you?” Muldoon said.

“I’m going to the maintenance building,” Gennaro said. “Wish me luck.”

Gennaro crouched in the foliage, listening.

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

Like to live dangerously?

Not really.

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

At least, he hoped not.

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

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

A man’s shoe.

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

Damn!

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

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

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

Sticky. He smelled it.

Blood.

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

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

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

Kill it.

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

It snarled, the sound echoing in the darkness.

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

Teeth.

It was biting him.

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

Lying in bed, soaked in sweat, Malcolm listened as the radio crackled.

“Anything?” Muldoon said. “You getting anything?”

“No word,” Wu said.

“Hell,” Muldoon said.

There was a pause.

Malcolm sighed. “I can’t wait,” he said, “to hear his new plan.”

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

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

“Maybe. But you’d be abandoning the control room.”

“I can’t do anything here anyway.”

“God knows that’s true,” Malcolm said. “A control room without electricity is not much of a control room.”

“All right,” Muldoon said. “Let’s try. This isn’t looking good.”

Lying in his bed, Malcolm said, “No, it’s not looking good. It’s looking like a disaster.”

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

“We’re still better off,” Malcolm said. “Let’s go.”

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

“Just relax,” Ellie said. “Just take it easy.”

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

Malcolm coughed.

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

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

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

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

“This is very extreme,” Hammond said, shaking his head.

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

“So what will happen?” Ellie said.

Malcolm shrugged. “A change.”

“What kind of change?”

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

“The poor man,” Hammond said, shaking his head.

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

SIXTH ITERATION

“System recovery may prove impossible.”

IAN MALCOLM

RETURN

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

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

“Because I shot it with tranquilizer,” he said.

“Is it going to die?” she said.

“I hope not.”

“Why are we taking it?” Lex said.

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

“How do you know they’re breeding?”

“Because this one is young,” Grant said. “And because it’s a boy dinosaur.”

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

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

“It says … ten-fifteen.”

“Okay.”

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

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

“Wow!” Tim said.

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

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

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

And they fell silent.

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

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

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

“Hello, this is Grant. Hello.”

Lex was leaning forward, peering around the edge of the desk.

Grant grabbed her sleeve. “Hey. Stop that.”

“Is he dead? What’s that stuff on the floor? Blood?”

“Yes.”

“How come it isn’t real red?”

“You’re morbid,” Tim said.

“What’s ‘morbid’? I am not.”

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

And then: “Alan? Alan?” It was Ellie.

“I’m here,” Grant said.

“Thank God,” Ellie said. “Are you all right?”

“I’m all right, yes.”

“What about the kids? Have you seen them?”

“I have the kids with me,” Grant said. “They’re okay.”

“Thank God.”

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

The radio crackled. “—n where are you?”

“In the lobby. In the lobby of the main building.”

Over the radio, he heard Wu say, “My God. They’re here.”

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

“Great. Where are you?” Grant said.

“We’re in the lodge.”

Grant said, “And the others? Muldoon, everybody else?”

“We’ve lost a few people. But we got everybody else over to the lodge.”

“And are the telephones working?”

“No. The whole system is shut off. Nothing works.”

“How do we get the system back on?”

“We’ve been trying.”

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

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

“How’s that?”

“Some of the raptors followed us. We’ve got two on the roof now.”

“So what? The building’s impregnable.”

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

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

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

“How fast?” Grant said again.

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

The radio clicked off.

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

“God, they’re ugly,” Malcolm said, looking up.

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

“At least they can’t get in yet,” Ellie said. “Not until they chew through another bar.”

Wu said, “If Grant could somehow get to the maintenance shed …”

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

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

“What’d he say?” Muldoon said.

“Yes,” Malcolm repeated. “Can …”

“Can what?”

“Distraction …” He winced.

“What kind of a distraction?”

“Go to … the fence.…”

“Yes? And do what?”

Malcolm grinned weakly. “Stick … your hands through.”

“Oh Christ,” Muldoon said, turning away.

“Wait a minute,” Wu said. “He’s right. There are only two raptors here. Which means there are at least four more out there. We could go out and provide a distraction.”

“And then what?”

“And then Grant would be free to go to the maintenance building and turn on the generator.”

“And then go back to the control room and start up the system?”

“Exactly.”

“No time,” Muldoon said. “No time.”

“But if we can lure the raptors down here,” Wu said, “maybe even get them away from that skylight … It might work. Worth a try.”

“Bait,” Muldoon said.

“Exactly.”

“Who’s going to be the bait? I’m no good. My ankle’s shot.”

“I’ll do it,” Wu said.

“No,” Muldoon said. “You’re the only one who knows what to do about the computer. You need to talk Grant through the start-up.”

“Then I’ll do it,” Harding said.

“No,” Ellie said. “Malcolm needs you. I’ll do it.”

“Hell, I don’t think so,” Muldoon said. “You’d have raptors all around you, raptors on the roof.…”

But she was already bending over, lacing her running shoes. “Just don’t tell Grant,” she said. “It’ll make him nervous.”

The lobby was quiet, chilly fog drifting past them. The radio had been silent for several minutes. Tim said, “Why aren’t they talking to us?”

“I’m hungry,” Lex said.

“They’re trying to plan,” Grant said.

The radio crackled. “Grant, are you—nry Wu speaking. Are you there?”

“I’m here,” Grant said.

“Listen,” Wu said. “Can you see to the rear of the visitor building from where you are?”

Grant looked through the rear glass doors, to the palm trees and the fog.

“Yes,” Grant said.

Wu said, “There’s a path straight through the palm trees to the maintenance building. That’s where the power equipment and generators are. I believe you saw the maintenance building yesterday?”

“Yes,” Grant said. Though he was momentarily puzzled. Was it yesterday that he had looked into the building? It seemed like years ago.

“Now, listen,” Wu said. “We think we can get all the raptors down here by the lodge, but we aren’t sure. So be careful. Give us five minutes.”

“Okay,” Grant said.

“You can leave the kids in the cafeteria, and they should be all right. Take the radio with you when you go.”

“Okay.”

“Turn it off before you leave, so it doesn’t make any noise outside. And call me when you get to the maintenance building.”

“Okay.”

Grant turned the radio off. Lex crawled back. “Are we going to the cafeteria?” she said.

“Yes,” Grant said. They got up, and started walking through the blowing mist in the lobby.

“I want a hamburger,” Lex said.

“I don’t think there’s any electricity to cook with.”

“Then ice cream.”

“Tim, you’ll have to stay with her and help her.”

“I will.”

“I’ve got to leave for a while,” Grant said.

“I know.”

They moved to the cafeteria entrance. On opening the door, Grant saw square dining-room tables and chairs, swinging stainless-steel doors beyond. Nearby, a cash register and a rack with gum and candy.

“Okay, kids. I want you to stay here no matter what. Got it?”

“Leave us the radio,” Lex said.

“I can’t. I need it. Just stay here. I’ll only be gone about five minutes. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Grant closed the door. The cafeteria became completely dark. Lex clutched his hand. “Turn on the lights,” she said.

“I can’t,” Tim said. “There’s no electricity.” But he pulled down his night-vision goggles.

“That’s fine for you. What about me?”

“Just hold my hand. We’ll get some food.” He led her forward. In phosphorescent green he saw the tables and chairs. To the right, the glowing green cash register, and the rack with gum and candy. He grabbed a handful of candy bars.

“I told you,” Lex said. “I want ice cream, not candy.”

“Take these anyway.”

“Ice cream, Tim.”

“Okay, okay.”

Tim stuffed the candy bars in his pocket, and led Lex deeper into the dining room. She tugged on his hand. “I can’t see spit,” she said.

“Just walk with me. Hold my hand.”

“Then slow down.”

Beyond the tables and chairs was a pair of swinging doors with little round windows in them. They probably led to the kitchen. He pushed one door open and it held wide.

Ellie Sattler stepped outside the front door to the lodge, and felt the chilly mist on her face and legs. Her heart was thumping, even though she knew she was completely safe behind the fence. Directly ahead, she saw the heavy bars in the fog.

But she couldn’t see much beyond the fence. Another twenty yards before the landscape turned milky white. And she didn’t see any raptors at all. In fact, the gardens and trees were almost eerily silent. “Hey!” she shouted into the fog, tentatively.

Muldoon leaned against the door frame. “I doubt that’ll do it,” he said. “You’ve got to make a noise.” He hobbled out carrying a steel rod from the construction inside. He banged the rod against the bars like a dinner gong. “Come and get it! Dinner is served!”

“Very amusing,” Ellie said. She glanced nervously toward the roof. She saw no raptors.

“They don’t understand English.” Muldoon grinned. “But I imagine they get the general idea.…”

She was still nervous, and found his humor annoying. She looked toward the visitor building, cloaked in the fog. Muldoon resumed banging on the bars. At the limit of her vision, almost lost in the fog, she saw a ghostly pale animal. A raptor.

“First customer,” Muldoon said.

The raptor disappeared, a white shadow, and then came back, but it did not approach any closer, and it seemed strangely incurious about the noise coming from the lodge. She was starting to worry. Unless she could attract the raptors to the lodge, Grant would be in danger.

“You’re making too much noise,” Ellie said.

“Bloody hell,” Muldoon said.

“Well, you are.”

“I know these animals—”

“You’re drunk,” she said. “Let me handle it.”

“And how will you do that?”

She didn’t answer him. She went to the gate. “They say the raptors are intelligent.”

“They are. At least as intelligent as chimps.”

“They have good hearing?”

“Yes, excellent.”

“Maybe they’ll know this sound,” she said, and opened the gate. The metal hinges, rusted from the constant mist, creaked loudly. She closed it again, opened it with another creak.

She left it open.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Muldoon said. “You’re going to do that, let me get the launcher.”

“Get the launcher.”

He sighed, remembering. “Gennaro has the shells.”

“Well, then,” she said. “Keep an eye out.” And she went through the gate, stepping outside the bars. Her heart was pounding so hard she could barely feel her feet on the dirt. She moved away from the fence, and it disappeared frighteningly fast in the fog. Soon it was lost behind her.

Just as she expected, Muldoon began shouting to her in drunken agitation. “God damn it, girl, don’t you do that,” he bellowed.

“Don’t call me ‘girl,’ ” she shouted back.

“I’ll call you any damn thing I want,” Muldoon shouted.

She wasn’t listening. She was turning slowly, her body tense, watching from all sides. She was at least twenty yards from the fence now, and she could see the mist drifting like a light rain past the foliage. She stayed away from the foliage. She moved through a world of shades of gray. The muscles in her legs and shoulders ached from the tension. Her eyes strained to see.

“Do you hear me, damn it?” Muldoon bellowed.

How good are these animals? she wondered. Good enough to cut off my retreat? There wasn’t much distance back to the fence, not really—

They attacked.

There was no sound.

The first animal charged from the foliage at the base of a tree to the left. It sprang forward and she turned to run. The second attacked from the other side, clearly intending to catch her as she ran, and it leapt into the air, claws raised to attack, and she darted like a broken field runner, and the animal crashed down in the dirt. Now she was running flat out, not daring to look back, her breath coming in deep gasps, seeing the bars of the fence emerge from the haze, seeing Muldoon throw the gate wide, seeing him reaching for her, shouting to her, grabbing her arm and pulling her through so hard she was yanked off her feet and fell to the ground. And she turned in time to see first one, then two—then three—animals hit the fence and snarl.

“Good work,” Muldoon shouted. He was taunting the animals now, snarling back, and it drove them wild. They flung themselves at the fence, leaping forward, and one of them nearly made it over the top. “Christ, that was close! These bastards can jump!”

She got to her feet, looking at the scrapes and bruises, the blood running down her leg. All she could think was: three animals here. And two on the roof. That meant one was still missing, somewhere.

“Come on, help me,” Muldoon said. “Let’s keep ’em interested!”

Grant left the visitor center and moved quickly forward, into the mist. He found the path among the palm trees and followed it north. Up ahead, the rectangular maintenance shed emerged from the fog.

There was no door that he could see at all. He walked on, around the corner. At the back, screened by planting, Grant saw a concrete loading dock for trucks. He scrambled up to face a vertical rolling door of corrugated steel; it was locked. He jumped down again and continued around the building. Farther ahead, to his right, Grant saw an ordinary door. It was propped open with a man’s shoe.

Grant stepped inside and squinted in the darkness. He listened, heard nothing. He picked up his radio and turned it on.

“This is Grant,” he said. “I’m inside.”

Wu looked up at the skylight. The two raptors still peered down into Malcolm’s room, but they seemed distracted by the noises outside. He went to the lodge window. Outside, the three velociraptors continued to charge the fence. Ellie was running back and forth, safely behind the bars. But the raptors no longer seemed to be seriously trying to get her. Now they almost seemed to be playing, circling back from the fence, rearing up and snarling, then dropping down low, to circle again and finally charge. Their behavior had taken on the distinct quality of display, rather than serious attack.

“Like birds,” Muldoon said. “Putting on a show.”

Wu nodded. “They’re intelligent. They see they can’t get her.

They’re not really trying.”

The radio crackled. “—side.”

Wu gripped the radio. “Say again, Dr. Grant?”

“I’m inside,” Grant said.

“Dr. Grant, you’re in the maintenance building?”

“Yes,” Grant said. And he added, “Maybe you should call me Alan.”

“All right, Alan. If you’re standing just inside the east door, you see a lot of pipes and tubing.” Wu closed his eyes, visualizing it. “Straight ahead is a big recessed well in the center of the building that goes two stories underground. To your left is a metal walkway with railings.”

“I see it.”

“Go along the walkway.”

“I’m going.” Faintly, the radio carried the clang of his footsteps on metal.

“After you go twenty or thirty feet, you will see another walkway going right.”

“I see it,” Grant said.

“Follow that walkway.”

“Okay.”

“As you continue,” Wu said, “you will come to a ladder on your left. Going down into the pit.”

“I see it.”

“Go down the ladder.”

There was a long pause. Wu ran his fingers through his damp hair. Muldoon frowned tensely.

“Okay, I’m down the ladder,” Grant said.

“Good,” Wu said. “Now, straight ahead of you should be two large yellow tanks that are marked ‘Flammable.’ ”

“They say ‘In-flammable.’ And then something underneath. In Spanish.”

“Those are the ones,” Wu said. “Those are the two fuel tanks for the generator. One of them has been run dry, and so we have to switch over to the other. If you look at the bottom of the tanks, you’ll see a white pipe coming out.”

“Four-inch PVC?”

“Yes. PVC. Follow that pipe as it goes back.”

“Okay. I’m following it.… Ow!”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. I hit my head.”

There was a pause.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah, fine. Just … hurt my head. Stupid.”

“Keep following the pipe.”

“Okay, okay,” Grant said. He sounded irritable. “Okay. The pipe goes to a big aluminum box with air vents in the sides. Says ‘Honda.’ It looks like the generator.”

“Yes,” Wu said. “That’s the generator. If you walk around to the side, you’ll see a panel with two buttons.”

“I see them. Yellow and red?”

“That’s right,” Wu said. “Press the yellow one first, and while you hold it down, press the red one.”

“Right.”

There was another pause. It lasted almost a minute. Wu and Muldoon looked at each other.

“Alan?”

“It didn’t work,” Grant said.

“Did you hold down the yellow first and then press the red?” Wu asked.

“Yes, I did,” Grant said. He sounded annoyed. “I did exactly what you told me to do. There was a hum, and then a click, click, click, very fast, and then the hum stopped, and nothing after that.”

“Try it again.”

“I already did,” Grant said. “It didn’t work.”

“Okay, just a minute.” Wu frowned. “It sounds like the generator is trying to fire up but it can’t for some reason. Alan?”

“I’m here.”

“Go around to the back of the generator, to where the plastic pipe runs in.”

“Okay.” A pause; then Grant said, “The pipe goes into a round black cylinder that looks like a fuel pump.”

“That’s right,” Wu said. “That’s exactly what it is. It’s the fuel pump. Look for a little valve at the top.”

“A valve?”

“It should be sticking up at the top, with a little metal tab that you can turn.”

“I found it. But it’s on the side, not the top.”

“Okay. Twist it open.”

“Air is coming out.”

“Good. Wait until—”

“—now liquid is coming out. It smells like gas.”

“Okay. Close the valve.” Wu turned to Muldoon, shaking his head. “Pump lost its prime. Alan?”

“Yes.”

“Try the buttons again.”

A moment later, Wu heard the faint coughing and sputtering as the generator turned over, and then the steady chugging sound as it caught. “It’s on,” Grant said.

“Good work, Alan! Good work!”

“Now what?” Grant said. He sounded flat, dull. “The lights haven’t even come on in here.”

“Go back to the control room, and I’ll talk you through restoring the systems manually.”

“That’s what I have to do now?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” Grant said. “I’ll call you when I get there.”

There was a final hiss, and silence.

“Alan?”

The radio was dead.

Tim went through the swinging doors at the back of the dining room and entered the kitchen. A big stainless-steel table in the center of the room, a big stove with lots of burners to the left, and, beyond that, big walk-in refrigerators. Tim started opening the refrigerators, looking for ice cream. Smoke came out in the humid air as he opened each one.

“How come the stove is on?” Lex said, releasing his hand.

“It’s not on.”

“They all have little blue flames.”

“Those’re pilot lights.”

“What’re pilot lights?” They had an electric stove at home.

“Never mind,” Tim said, opening another refrigerator. “But it means I can cook you something.” In this next refrigerator, he found all kinds of stuff, cartons of milk, and piles of vegetables, and a stack of T-bone steaks, fish—but no ice cream.

“You still want ice cream?”

“I told you, didn’t I?”

The next refrigerator was huge. A stainless-steel door, with a wide horizontal handle. He tugged on the handle, pulled it open, and saw a walk-in freezer. It was a whole room, and it was freezing cold.

“Timmy …”

“Will you wait a minute?” he said, annoyed. “I’m trying to find your ice cream.”

“Timmy … something’s here.”

She was whispering, and for a moment the last two words didn’t register. Then Tim hurried back out of the freezer, seeing the edge of the door wreathed in glowing green smoke. Lex stood by the steel worktable. She was looking back to the kitchen door.

He heard a low hissing sound, like a very large snake. The sound rose and fell softly. It was hardly audible. It might even be the wind, but he somehow knew it wasn’t.

“Timmy,” she whispered, “I’m scared.…”

He crept forward to the kitchen door and looked out.

In the darkened dining room, he saw the orderly green rectangular pattern of the tabletops. And moving smoothly among them, silent as a ghost except for the hissing of its breath, was a velociraptor.

In the darkness of the maintenance room, Grant felt along the pipes, moving back toward the ladder. It was difficult to make his way in the dark, and somehow he found the noise of the generator disorienting. He came to the ladder, and had started back up when he realized there was something else in the room besides generator noise.

Grant paused, listening.

It was a man shouting.

It sounded like Gennaro.

“Where are you?” Grant shouted.

“Over here,” Gennaro said. “In the truck.”

Grant couldn’t see any truck. He squinted in the darkness. He looked out of the corner of his eye. He saw green glowing shapes, moving in the darkness. Then he saw the truck, and he turned toward it.

Tim found the silence chilling.

The velociraptor was six feet tall, and powerfully built, although its strong legs and tail were hidden by the tables. Tim could see only the muscular upper torso, the two forearms held tightly alongside the body, the claws dangling. He could see the iridescent speckled pattern on the back. The velociraptor was alert; as it came forward, it looked from side to side, moving its head with abrupt, bird-like jerks. The head also bobbed up and down as it walked, and the long straight tail dipped, which heightened the impression of a bird.

A gigantic, silent bird of prey.

The dining room was dark, but apparently the raptor could see well enough to move steadily forward. From time to time, it would bend over, lowering its head below the tables. Tim heard a rapid sniffing sound. Then the head would snap up, alertly, jerking back and forth like a bird’s.

Tim watched until he was sure the velociraptor was coming toward the kitchen. Was it following their scent? All the books said dinosaurs had a poor sense of smell, but this one seemed to do just fine. Anyway, what did books know? Here was the real thing.

Coming toward him.

He ducked back into the kitchen.

“Is something out there?” Lex said.

Tim didn’t answer. He pushed her under a table in the corner, behind a large waste bin. He leaned close to her and whispered fiercely: “Stay here!” And then he ran for the refrigerator.

He grabbed a handful of cold steaks and hurried back to the door. He quietly placed the first of the steaks on the floor, then moved back a few steps, and put down the second.…

Through his goggles, he saw Lex peeping around the bin. He waved her back. He placed the third steak, and the fourth, moving deeper into the kitchen.

The hissing was louder, and then the clawed hand gripped the door, and the big head peered cautiously around.

The velociraptor paused at the entrance to the kitchen.

Tim stood in a half-crouch at the back of the room, near the far leg of the steel worktable. But he had not had time to conceal himself; his head and shoulders still protruded over the tabletop. He was in clear view of the velociraptor.

Slowly, Tim lowered his body, sinking beneath the table.… The velociraptor jerked its head around, looking directly at Tim.

Tim froze. He was still exposed, but he thought, Don’t move.

The velociraptor stood motionless in the doorway.

Sniffing.

It’s darker here, Tim thought. He can’t see so well. It’s making him cautious.

But now he could smell the musty odor of the big reptile, and through his goggles he saw the dinosaur silently yawn, throwing back its long snout, exposing rows of razor-sharp teeth. The velociraptor stared forward again, jerking its head from side to side. The big eyes swiveled in the bony sockets.

Tim felt his heart pounding. Somehow it was worse to be confronted by an animal like this in a kitchen, instead of the open forest. The size, the quick movements, the pungent odor, the hissing breath …

Up close, it was a much more frightening animal than the tyrannosaur. The tyrannosaur was huge and powerful, but it wasn’t especially smart. The velociraptor was man-size, and it was clearly quick and intelligent; Tim feared the searching eyes almost as much as the sharp teeth.

The velociraptor sniffed. It stepped forward—moving directly toward Lex! It must smell her, somehow! Tim’s heart thumped.

The velociraptor stopped. It bent over slowly.

He’s found the steak.

Tim wanted to bend down, to look below the table, but he didn’t dare move. He stood frozen in a half-crouch, listening to the crunching sound. The dinosaur was eating it. Bones and all.

The raptor raised its slender head, and looked around. It sniffed. It saw the second steak. It moved quickly forward. It bent down.

Silence.

The raptor didn’t eat it.

The head came back up. Tim’s legs burned from the crouch, but he didn’t move.

Why hadn’t the animal eaten the second steak? A dozen ideas flashed through his mind—it didn’t like the taste of beef, it didn’t like the coldness, it didn’t like the fact that the meat wasn’t alive, it smelled a trap, it smelled Lex, it smelled Tim, it saw Tim—

The velociraptor moved very quickly now. It found the third steak, dipped its head, looked up again, and moved on.

Tim held his breath. The dinosaur was now just a few feet from him. Tim could see the small twitches in the muscles of the flanks. He could see the crusted blood on the claws of the hand. He could see the fine pattern of striations within the spotted pattern, and the folds of skin in the neck below the jaw.

The velociraptor sniffed. It jerked its head, and looked right at Tim. Tim nearly gasped with fright. Tim’s body was rigid, tense. He watched as the reptile eye moved, scanning the room. Another sniff.

He’s got me, Tim thought.

Then the head jerked back to look forward, and the animal went on, toward the fifth steak. Tim thought, Lex please don’t move please don’t move whatever you do please don’t …

The velociraptor sniffed the steak, and moved on. It was now at the open door to the freezer. Tim could see the smoke billowing out, curling along the floor toward the animal’s feet. One big clawed foot lifted, then came down again, silently. The dinosaur hesitated. Too cold, Tim thought. He won’t go in there, it’s too cold, he won’t go in he won’t go in he won’t go in.…

The dinosaur went in.

The head disappeared, then the body, then the stiff tail.

Tim sprinted, flinging his weight against the stainless-steel door of the locker, slamming it shut. It slammed on the tip of the tail! The door wouldn’t shut! The velociraptor roared, a terrifying loud sound. Inadvertently, Tim took a step back—the tail was gone! He slammed the door shut and heard it click! Closed!

“Lex! Lex!” he was screaming. He heard the raptor pounding against the door, felt it thumping the steel. He knew there was a flat steel knob inside, and if the raptor hit that, it would knock the door open. They had to get the door locked. “Lex!”

Lex was by his side. “What do you want!”

Tim leaned against the horizontal door handle, holding it shut. “There’s a pin! A little pin! Get the pin!”

The velociraptor roared like a lion, the sound muffled by the thick steel. It crashed its whole body against the door.

“I can’t see anything!” Lex shouted.

The pin was dangling beneath the door handle, swinging on a little metal chain. “It’s right there!”

“I can’t see it!” she screamed, and then Tim realized she wasn’t wearing the goggles.

“Feel for it!”

He saw her little hand reaching up, touching his, groping for the pin, and with her so close to him he could feel how frightened she was, her breath in little panicky gasps as she felt for the pin, and the velociraptor slammed against the door and it opened—God, it opened—but the animal hadn’t expected that and had already turned back for another try and Tim slammed the door shut again. Lex scrambled back, reached up in the darkness.

“I have it!” Lex cried, clutching the pin in her hand, and she pushed it through the hole. It slid out again.

“From the top, put it in from the top!”

She held it again, lifting it on the chain, swinging it over the handle, and down. Into the hole.

Locked.

The velociraptor roared. Tim and Lex stepped back from the door as the dinosaur slammed into it again. With each impact, the heavy steel wall hinges creaked, but they held. Tim didn’t think the animal could possibly open the door.

The raptor was locked in.

He gave a long sigh. “Let’s go,” he said.

He took her hand, and they ran.

“You should have seen them,” Gennaro said, as Grant led him back out of the maintenance building. “There must have been two dozen of them. Compys. I had to crawl into the truck to get away from them. They were all over the windshield. Just squatting there, waiting like buzzards. But they ran away when you came over.”

“Scavengers,” Grant said. “They won’t attack anything that’s moving or looks strong. They attack things that are dead, or almost dead. Anyway, unmoving.”

They were going up the ladder now, back toward the entrance door. “What happened to the raptor that attacked you?” Grant said.

“I don’t know,” Gennaro said.

“Did it leave?”

“I didn’t see. I got away, I think because it was injured. I think Muldoon shot it in the leg and it was bleeding while it was in here. Then … I don’t know. Maybe it went back outside. Maybe it died in here. I didn’t see.”

“And maybe it’s still in here,” Grant said.

Wu stared out the lodge window at the raptors beyond the fence. They still seemed playful, making mock attacks at Ellie. The behavior had continued for a long time now, and it occurred to him that it might be too long. It almost seemed as if they were trying to keep Ellie’s attention, in the same way that she was trying to keep theirs.

The behavior of the dinosaurs had always been a minor consideration for Wu. And rightly so: behavior was a second-order effect of DNA, like protein enfolding. You couldn’t really predict behavior, and you couldn’t really control it, except in very crude ways, like making an animal dependent on a dietary substance by withholding an enzyme. But, in general, behavioral effects were simply beyond the reach of understanding. You couldn’t look at a DNA sequence and predict behavior. It was impossible.

And that had made Wu’s DNA work purely empirical. It was a matter of tinkering, the way a modern workman might repair an antique grandfather clock. You were dealing with something out of the past, something constructed of ancient materials and following ancient rules. You couldn’t be certain why it worked as it did; and it had been repaired and modified many times already, by forces of evolution, over eons of time. So, like the workman who makes an adjustment and then sees if the clock runs any better, Wu would make an adjustment and then see if the animals behaved any better. And he only tried to correct gross behavior: uncontrolled butting of the electrical fences, or rubbing the skin raw on tree trunks. Those were the behaviors that sent him back to the drawing board.

And the limits of his science had left him with a mysterious feeling about the dinosaurs in the park. He was never sure, never really sure at all, whether the behavior of the animals was historically accurate or not. Were they behaving as they really had in the past? It was an open question, ultimately unanswerable.

And though Wu would never admit it, the discovery that the dinosaurs were breeding represented a tremendous validation of his work. A breeding animal was demonstrably effective in a fundamental way; it implied that Wu had put all the pieces together correctly. He had re-created an animal millions of years old, with such precision that the creature could even reproduce itself.

But, still, looking at the raptors outside, he was troubled by the persistence of their behavior. Raptors were intelligent, and intelligent animals got bored quickly. Intelligent animals also formed plans, and—

Harding came out into the hallway from Malcolm’s room. “Where’s Ellie?”

“Still outside.”

“Better get her in. The raptors have left the skylight.”

“When?” Wu said, moving to the door.

“Just a moment ago,” Harding said.

Wu threw open the front door. “Ellie! Inside, now!”

She looked over at him, puzzled. “There’s no problem, everything’s under control.…”

“Now!”

She shook her head. “I know what I’m doing,” she said.

“Now, Ellie, damn it!”

Muldoon didn’t like Wu standing there with the door open, and he was about to say so, when he saw a shadow descend from above, and he realized at once what had happened. Wu was yanked bodily out the door, and Muldoon heard Ellie screaming. Muldoon got to the door and looked out and saw that Wu was lying on his back, his body already torn open by the big claw, and the raptor was jerking its head, tugging at Wu’s intestines even though Wu was still alive, still feebly reaching up with his hands to push the big head away, he was being eaten while he was still alive, and then Ellie stopped screaming and started to run along the inside of the fence, and Muldoon slammed the door shut, dizzy with horror. It had happened so fast!

Harding said, “He jumped down from the roof?”

Muldoon nodded. He went to the window and looked out, and he saw that the three raptors outside the fence were now running away. But they weren’t following Ellie.

They were going back, toward the visitor center.

Grant came to the edge of the maintenance building and peered forward, in the fog. He could hear the snarls of the raptors, and they seemed to be coming closer. Now he could see their bodies running past him. They were going to the visitor center.

He looked back at Gennaro.

Gennaro shook his head, no.

Grant leaned close and whispered in his ear. “No choice. We’ve got to turn on the computer.”

Grant set out in the fog.

After a moment, Gennaro followed.

Ellie didn’t stop to think. When the raptors dropped inside the fence to attack Wu, she just turned and ran, as fast as she could, toward the far end of the lodge. There was a space fifteen feet wide between the fence and the lodge. She ran, not hearing the animals pursuing her, just hearing her own breath. She rounded the corner, saw a tree growing by the side of the building, and leapt, grabbing a branch, swinging up. She didn’t feel panic. She felt a kind of exhilaration as she kicked and saw her legs rise up in front of her face, and she hooked her legs over a branch farther up, tightened her gut, and pulled up quickly.

She was already twelve feet off the ground, and the raptors still weren’t following her, and she was beginning to feel pretty good, when she saw the first animal at the base of the tree. Its mouth was bloody, and bits of stringy flesh hung from its jaws. She continued to go up fast, hand over hand, just reaching and going, and she could almost see the top of the building. She looked down again.

The two raptors were climbing the tree.

Now she was at the level of the rooftop, she could see the gravel only four feet away, and the glass pyramids of the skylights, sticking up in the mist. There was a door on the roof; she could get inside. In a single heaving effort she flung herself through the air, and landed sprawling on the gravel. She scraped her face, but somehow the only sensation was exhilaration, as if it were a kind of game she was playing, a game she intended to win. She ran for the door that led to the stairwell. Behind her, she could hear the raptors shaking the branches of the tree. They were still in the tree.

She reached the door, and twisted the knob.

The door was locked.

It took a moment for the meaning of that to cut through her euphoria. The door was locked. She was on the roof and she couldn’t get down. The door was locked.

She pounded on the door in frustration, and then she ran for the far side of the roof, hoping to see a way down, but there was only the green outline of the swimming pool through the blowing mist. All around the pool was concrete decking. Ten, twelve feet of concrete. Too much for her to jump across. No other trees to climb down. No stairs. No fire escape.

Nothing.

Ellie turned back, and saw the raptors jumping easily to the roof. She ran to the far end of the building, hoping there might be another door there, but there wasn’t.

The raptors came slowly toward her, stalking her, slipping silently among the glass pyramids. She looked down. The edge of the pool was ten feet away.

Too far.

The raptors were closer, starting to move apart, and illogically she thought: Isn’t this always the way? Some little mistake screws it all up. She still felt giddy, still felt exhilaration, and she somehow couldn’t believe these animals were going to get her, she couldn’t believe that now her life was going to end like this. It didn’t seem possible. She was enveloped in a kind of protective cheerfulness. She just didn’t believe it would happen.

The raptors snarled. Ellie backed away, moving to the far end of the roof. She took a breath, and then began to sprint toward the edge. As she raced toward the edge, she saw the swimming pool, and she knew it was too far away but she thought, What the hell, and leapt into space.

And fell.

And with a stinging shock, she felt herself enveloped in coldness. She was underwater. She had done it! She came to the surface and looked up at the roof, and saw the raptors looking down at her. And she knew that, if she could do it, the raptors could do it, too. She splashed in the water and thought, Can raptors swim? But she was sure they could. They could probably swim like crocodiles.

The raptors turned away from the edge of the roof. And then she heard Harding calling “Sattler?” and she realized he had opened the roof door. The raptors were going toward him.

Hurriedly, she climbed out of the pool and ran toward the lodge.

Harding had gone up the steps to the roof two at a time, and he had flung open the door without thinking. “Sattler!” he shouted. And then he stopped. Mist blew among the pyramids on the roof. The raptors were not in sight.

“Sattler!”

He was so preoccupied with Sattler that it was a moment before he realized his mistake. He should be able to see the animals, he thought. In the next instant the clawed forearm smashed around the side of the door, catching him in the chest with a tearing pain, and it took all of his effort to pull himself backward and close the door on the arm, and from downstairs he heard Muldoon shouting, “She’s here, she’s already inside.”

From the other side of the door, the raptor snarled, and Harding slammed the door again, and the claws pulled back, and he closed the door with a metallic clang and sank coughing to the floor.

“Where are we going?” Lex said. They were on the second floor of the visitor center. A glass-walled corridor ran the length of the building.

“To the control room,” Tim said.

“Where’s that?”

“Down here someplace.” Tim looked at the names stenciled on the doors as he went past them. These seemed to be offices: PARK WARDEN … GUEST SERVICES … GENERAL MANAGER … COMPTROLLER …

They came to a glass partition marked with a sign:

CLOSED AREA
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
BEYOND THIS POINT

There was a slot for a security card, but Tim just pushed the door open.

“How come it opened?”

“The power is out,” Tim said.

“Why’re we going to the control room?” she asked.

“To find a radio. We need to call somebody.”

Beyond the glass door the hallway continued. Tim remembered this area; he had seen it earlier, during the tour. Lex trotted along at his side. In the distance, they heard the snarling of raptors. The animals seemed to be approaching. Then Tim heard them slamming against the glass downstairs.

“They’re out there …” Lex whispered.

“Don’t worry.”

“What are they doing here?” Lex said.

“Never mind now.”

PARK SUPERVISOR … OPERATIONS … MAIN CONTROL …

“Here,” Tim said. He pushed open the door. The main control room was as he had seen it before. In the center of the room was a console with four chairs and four computer monitors. The room was entirely dark except for the monitors, which all showed a series of colored rectangles.

“So where’s a radio?” Lex said.

But Tim had forgotten all about a radio. He moved forward, staring at the computer screens. The screens were on! That could only mean—

“The power must be back on.…”

“Ick,” Lex said, shifting her body.

“What.”

“I was standing on somebody’s ear,” she said.

Tim hadn’t seen a body when they came in. He looked back and saw there was just an ear, lying on the floor.

“That is really disgusting,” Lex said.

“Never mind.” He turned to the monitors.

“Where’s the rest of him?” she said.

“Never mind that now.”

He peered closely at the monitor. There were rows of colored labels on the screen:

“You better not fool around with that, Timmy,” she said.

“Don’t worry, I won’t.”

He had seen complicated computers before, like the ones that were installed in the buildings his father worked on. Those computers controlled everything from the elevators and security to the heating and cooling systems. They looked basically like this—a lot of colored labels—but they were usually simpler to understand. And almost always there was a help label, if you needed to learn about the system. But he saw no help label here. He looked again, to be sure.

But then he saw something else: numerals clicking in the upper left corner of the screen. They read 10:47:22. Then Tim realized it was the time. There were only thirteen minutes left for the boat—but he was more worried about the people in the lodge.

There was a static crackle. He turned, and saw Lex holding a radio. She was twisting the knobs and dials. “How does it work?” she said. “I can’t make it work.”

“Give me that!”

“It’s mine! I found it!”

“Give it to me, Lex!”

“I get to use it first!”

“Lex!”

Suddenly, the radio crackled. “What the hell is going on!” said Muldoon’s voice.

Surprised, Lex dropped the radio on the floor.

Grant ducked back, crouching among the palm trees. Through the mist ahead he could see the raptors hopping and snarling and butting their heads against the glass of the visitor center. But, between snarls, they would fall silent and cock their heads, as if listening to something distant. And then they would make little whimpering sounds.

“What’re they doing?” Gennaro said.

“It looks like they’re trying to get into the cafeteria,” Grant said.

“What’s in the cafeteria?”

“I left the kids there …” Grant said.

“Can they break through that glass?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

Grant watched, and now he heard the crackle of a distant radio, and the raptors began hopping in a more agitated way. One after another, they began jumping higher and higher, until finally he saw the first of them leap lightly onto the second-floor balcony, and from there move inside the second floor of the visitor center.

In the control room on the second floor, Tim snatched up the radio which Lex had dropped. He pressed the button. “Hello? Hello?”

“—s that you, Tim?” It was Muldoon’s voice.

“It’s me, yes.”

“Where are you?”

“In the control room. The power is on!”

“That’s great, Tim,” Muldoon said.

“If someone will tell me how to turn the computer on, I’ll do it.”

There was a silence.

“Hello?” Tim said. “Did you hear me?”

“Ah, we have a problem about that,” Muldoon said. “Nobody, ah, who is here knows how to do that. How to turn the computer on.”

Tim said, “What, are you kidding? Nobody knows?” It seemed incredible.

“No.” A pause. “I think it’s something about the main grid. Turning on the main grid … You know anything about computers, Tim?”

Tim stared at the screen. Lex nudged him. “Tell him no, Timmy,” she said.

“Yes, some. I know something,” Tim said.

“Might as well try,” Muldoon said. “Nobody here knows what to do. And Grant doesn’t know about computers.”

“Okay,” Tim said. “I’ll try.” He clicked off the radio and stared at the screen, studying it.

“Timmy,” Lex said. “You don’t know what to do.”

“Yes I do.”

“If you know, then do it,” Lex said.

“Just a minute.” As a way to get started, he pulled the chair close to the keyboard and pressed the cursor keys. Those were the keys that moved the cursor around on the screen. But nothing happened. Then he pushed other keys. The screen remained unchanged.

“Well?” she said.

“Something’s wrong,” Tim said, frowning.

“You just don’t know, Timmy,” she said.

He examined the computer again, looking at it carefully. The keyboard had a row of function keys at the top, just like a regular PC keyboard, and the monitor was big and in color. But the monitor housing was sort of unusual. Tim looked at the edges of the screen and saw lots of faint pinpoints of red light.

Red light, all around the borders of the screen … What could that be? He moved his finger toward the light and saw the soft red glow on his skin.

He touched the screen and heard a beep.

A moment later, the message box disappeared, and the original screen flashed back up.

“What happened?” Lex said. “What did you do? You touched something.”

Of course! he thought. He had touched the screen. It was a touch screen! The red lights around the edges must be infrared sensors. Tim had never seen such a screen, but he’d read about them in magazines. He touched RESET/REVERT.

Instantly the screen changed. He got a new message:

THE COMPUTER IS NOW RESET
MAKE YOUR SELECTION FROM THE MAIN SCREEN

Over the radio, they heard the sound of raptors snarling. “I want to see,” Lex said. “You should try VIEW.”

“No, Lex.”

“Well, I want VIEW,” she said. And before he could grab her hand, she had pressed VIEW. The screen changed.

“Uh-oh,” she said.

“Lex, will you cut it out?”

“Look!” she said. “It worked! Ha!”

Around the room, the monitors showed quickly changing views of different parts of the park. Most of the images were misty gray, because of the exterior fog, but one showed the outside of the lodge, with a raptor on the roof, and then another switched to an image in bright sunlight, showing the bow of a ship, bright sunlight—

“What was that?” Tim said, leaning forward.

“What?”

“That picture!”

But the image had already changed, and now they were seeing the inside of the lodge, one room after another, and then he saw Malcolm, lying in a bed—

“Stop it,” Lex said. “I see them!”

Tim touched the screen in several places, and got submenus. Then more submenus.

“Wait,” Lex said. “You’re confusing it.…”

“Will you shut up! You don’t know anything about computers!”

Now he had a list of monitors on the screen. One of them was marked Safari Lodge: LV2–4. Another was REMOTE: SHIPBOARD (VND). He pressed the screen several times.

Video images came up on monitors around the room. One showed the bow of the supply ship, and the ocean ahead. In the distance, Tim saw land—buildings along a shore, and a harbor. He recognized the harbor because he had flown over it in the helicopter the day before. It was Puntarenas. The ship seemed to be just minutes from landing.

But his attention was drawn by the next screen, which showed the roof of the safari lodge, in gray mist. The raptors were mostly hidden behind the pyramids, but their heads bobbed up and down, coming into view.

And then, on the third monitor, he could see inside a room. Malcolm was lying in a bed, and Ellie stood next to him. They were both looking upward. As they watched, Muldoon walked into the room, and joined them, looking up with an expression of concern.

“They see us,” Lex said.

“I don’t think so.”

The radio crackled. On the screen, Muldoon lifted the radio to his lips. “Hello, Tim?”

“I’m here,” Tim said.

“Ah, we haven’t got a whole lot of time,” Muldoon said, dully. “Better get that power grid on.” And then Tim heard the raptors snarl, and saw one of the long heads duck down through the glass, briefly entering the picture from the top, snapping its jaws.

“Hurry, Timmy!” Lex said. “Get the power on!”

THE GRID

Tim suddenly found himself lost in a tangled series of monitor control screens, as he tried to get back to the main screen. Most systems had a single button or a single command to return to the previous screen, or to the main menu. But this system did not—or at least he didn’t know it. Also, he was certain that help commands had been built into the system, but he couldn’t find them either, and Lex was jumping up and down and shouting in his ear, making him nervous.

Finally he got the main screen back. He wasn’t sure what he had done, but it was back. He paused, looking for a command.

“Do something, Timmy!”

“Will you shut up? I’m trying to get help.” He pushed TEMPLATE-MAIN. The screen filled with a complicated diagram, with interconnecting boxes and arrows.

No good. No good.

He pushed COMMON INTERFACE. The screen shifted:

“What’s that?” Lex said. “Why aren’t you turning on the power, Timmy?”

He ignored her. Maybe help on this system was called “info.” He pushed INFO.

“Tim-ee,” Lex wailed, but he had already pushed FIND. He got another useless window. He pushed GO BACK.

On the radio, he heard Muldoon say, “How’s it coming, Tim?” He didn’t bother to answer. Frantic, he pushed buttons one after another.

Suddenly, without warning, the main screen was back.

He studied the screen. ELECTRICAL MAIN and SETGRIDS DNL both looked like they might have something to do with grids. He noticed that SAFETY/HEALTH and CRITICAL LOCKS might be important, too. He heard the growl of the raptors. He had to make a choice. He pressed SETGRIDS DNL, and groaned when he saw it:

He didn’t know what to do. He pushed STANDARD PARAMETERS.

Tim shook his head in frustration. It took him a moment to realize that he had just gotten valuable information. He now knew the grid coordinates for the lodge! He pushed grid F4.

POWER GRID F4 (SAFARI LODGE)

COMMAND CANNOT BE EXECUTED. ERROR-505

(Power Incompatible with Command Error.

Ref Manual Pages 4.09–4.11)

“It’s not working,” Lex said.

“I know!” He pushed another button. The screen flashed again.

POWER GRID F4 (SAFARI LODGE)

COMMAND CANNOT BE EXECUTED. ERROR-505

(Power Incompatible with Command Error.

Ref Manual Pages 4.09–4.11)

Tim tried to stay calm, to think it through. For some reason he was getting a consistent error message whenever he tried to turn on a grid. It was saying the power was incompatible with the command he was giving. But what did that mean? Why was power in compatible?

“Timmy …” Lex said, tugging at his arm.

“Not now, Lex.”

“Yes, now,” she said, and she pulled him away from the screen and the console. And then he heard the snarling of raptors.

It was coming from the hallway.

In the skylight above Malcolm’s bed, the raptors had almost bitten through the second metal bar. They could now poke their heads entirely through the shattered glass, and lunge and snarl at the people below. Then after a moment they would pull back, and resume chewing on the metal.

Malcolm said, “It won’t be long now. Three, four minutes.” He pressed the button on the radio: “Tim, are you there? Tim?”

There was no answer.

Tim slipped out the door and saw the velociraptor, down at the far end of the corridor, standing by the balcony. He stared in astonishment. How had it gotten out of the freezer?

Then, as he watched, a second raptor suddenly appeared on the balcony, and he understood. The raptor hadn’t come from the freezer at all. It had come from outside. It had jumped from the ground below. The second raptor landed silently, perfectly balanced on the railing. Tim couldn’t believe it. The big animal had jumped ten feet straight up. More than ten feet. Their legs must be incredibly powerful.

Lex whispered, “I thought you said they couldn’t—”

“Ssshh.” Tim was trying to think, but he watched with a kind of fascinated dread as the third raptor leapt to the balcony. The animals milled aimlessly in the corridor for a moment, and then they began to move forward in single file. Coming toward him and Lex.

Quietly, Tim pushed against the door at his back, to re-enter the control room. But the door was stuck. He pushed harder.

“We’re locked out,” Lex whispered. “Look.” She pointed to the slot for the security card alongside the door. A bright red dot glowed. Somehow the security doors had been activated. “You idiot, you locked us out!”

Tim looked down the corridor. He saw several more doors, but each had a red light glowing alongside. That meant all the doors were locked. There was nowhere they could go.

Then he saw a slumped shape on the floor at the far end of the corridor. It was a dead guard. A white security card was clipped to his belt.

“Come on,” he whispered. They ran for the guard. Tim got the card, and turned back. But of course the raptors had seen them. They snarled, and blocked the way back to the control room. They began to spread apart, fanning out in the hallway to surround Tim and Lex. Their heads began to duck rhythmically.

They were going to attack.

Tim did the only thing he could do. Using the card, he opened the nearest door off the hallway and pushed Lex through. As the door began to close slowly behind them, the raptors hissed and charged.

LODGE

Ian Malcolm drew each breath as if it might be his last. He watched the raptors with dull eyes. Harding took his blood pressure, frowned, took it again. Ellie Sattler was wrapped in a blanket, shivering and cold. Muldoon sat on the floor, propped against the wall. Hammond was staring upward, not speaking. They all listened to the radio.

“What happened to Tim?” Hammond said. “Still no word?”

“I don’t know.”

Malcolm said, “Ugly, aren’t they. Truly ugly.”

Hammond shook his head. “Who could have imagined it would turn out this way.”

Ellie said, “Apparently Malcolm did.”

“I didn’t imagine it,” Malcolm said. “I calculated it.”

Hammond sighed. “No more of this, please. He’s been saying ‘I told you so’ for hours. But nobody ever wanted this to happen.”

“It isn’t a matter of wanting it or not,” Malcolm said, eyes closed. He spoke slowly, through the drugs. “It’s a matter of what you think you can accomplish. When the hunter goes out in the rain forest to seek food for his family, does he expect to control nature? No. He imagines that nature is beyond him. Beyond his understanding. Beyond his control. Maybe he prays to nature, to the fertility of the forest that provides for him. He prays because he knows he doesn’t control it. He’s at the mercy of it.

“But you decide you won’t be at the mercy of nature. You decide you’ll control nature, and from that moment on you’re in deep trouble, because you can’t do it. Yet you have made systems that require you to do it. And you can’t do it—and you never have—and you never will. Don’t confuse things. You can make a boat, but you can’t make the ocean. You can make an airplane, but you can’t make the air. Your powers are much less than your dreams of reason would have you believe.”

“He’s lost me,” Hammond said, with a sigh. “Where did Tim go? He seemed such a responsible boy.”

“I’m sure he’s trying to get control of the situation,” Malcolm said. “Like everybody else.”

“And Grant, too. What happened to Grant?”

Grant reached the rear door to the visitor center, the same door he had left twenty minutes before. He tugged on the handle: it was locked. Then he saw the little red light. The security doors were reactivated! Damn! He ran around to the front of the building, and went through the shattered front doors into the main lobby, stopping by the guard desk where he had been earlier. He could hear the dry hiss of his radio. He went to the kitchen, looking for the kids, but the kitchen door was open, the kids gone.

He went upstairs but came to the glass panel marked CLOSED AREA and the door was locked. He needed a security card to go farther.

Grant couldn’t get in.

From somewhere inside the hallway, he heard the raptors snarling.

The leathery reptile skin touched Tim’s face, the claws tore his shirt, and Tim fell onto his back, shrieking in fright.

“Timmy!” Lex yelled.

Tim scrambled to his feet again. The baby velociraptor perched on his shoulder, chirping and squeaking in panic. Tim and Lex were in the white nursery. There were toys on the floor: a rolling yellow ball, a doll, a plastic rattle.

“It’s the baby raptor,” Lex said, pointing to the animal gripping Tim’s shoulder.

The little raptor burrowed its head into Tim’s neck. The poor thing was probably starving, Tim thought.

Lex came closer and the baby hopped onto her shoulder. It rubbed against her neck. “Why is it doing that?” she said. “Is it scared?”

“I don’t know,” Tim said.

She passed the raptor back to Tim. The baby was chirping and squeaking, and hopping up and down on his shoulder excitedly. It kept looking around, head moving quickly. No doubt about it, the little thing was worked up and—

“Tim,” Lex whispered.

The door to the hallway hadn’t closed behind them after they entered the nursery. Now the big velociraptors were coming through. First one, then a second one.

Clearly agitated, the baby chirped and bounced on Tim’s shoulder. Tim knew he had to get away. Maybe the baby would distract them. After all, it was a baby raptor. He plucked the little animal from his shoulder and threw it across the room. The baby scurried between the legs of the adults. The first raptor lowered its snout, sniffed at the baby delicately.

Tim took Lex’s hand, and pulled her deeper into the nursery. He had to find a door, a way to get out—

There was a high piercing shriek. Tim looked back to see the baby in the jaws of the adult. A second velociraptor came forward and tore at the limbs of the infant, trying to pull it from the mouth of the first. The two raptors fought over the baby as it squealed. Blood splattered in large drops onto the floor.

“They ate him,” Lex said.

The raptors fought over the remains of the baby, rearing back and butting heads. Tim found a door—it was unlocked—and went through, pulling Lex after him.

They were in another room, and from the deep green glow he realized it was the deserted DNA-extraction laboratory, the rows of stereo microscopes abandoned, the high-resolution screens showing frozen, giant black-and-white images of insects. The flies and gnats that had bitten dinosaurs millions of years ago, sucking the blood that now had been used to re-create dinosaurs in the park. They ran through the laboratory, and Tim could hear the snorts and snarls of the raptors, pursuing them, coming closer, and then he went to the back of the lab and through a door that must have had an alarm, because in the narrow corridor an intermittent siren sounded shrilly, and the lights overhead flashed on and off. Running down the corridor, Tim was plunged into darkness—then light again—then darkness. Over the sound of the alarm, he heard the raptors snort as they pursued him. Lex was whimpering and moaning. Tim saw another door ahead, with the blue biohazard sign, and he slammed into the door, and moved beyond it, and suddenly he collided with something big and Lex shrieked in terror.

“Take it easy, kids,” a voice said.

Tim blinked in disbelief. Standing above him was Dr. Grant. And next to him was Mr. Gennaro.

Outside in the hallway, it had taken Grant nearly two minutes to realize that the dead guard down in the lobby probably had a security card. He’d gone back and gotten it, and entered the upper corridor, moving quickly down the hallway. He had followed the sound of the raptors and found them fighting in the nursery. He was sure the kids would have gone to the next room, and had immediately run to the extractions lab.

And there he’d met the kids.

Now the raptors were coming toward them. The animals seemed momentarily hesitant, surprised by the appearance of more people.

Grant pushed the kids into Gennaro’s arms and said, “Take them back someplace safe.”

“But—”

“Through there,” Grant said, pointing over his shoulder to a far door. “Take them to the control room, if you can. You should all be safe there.”

“What are you going to do?” Gennaro said.

The raptors stood near the door. Grant noticed that they waited until all the animals were together, and then they moved forward, as a group. Pack hunters. He shivered.

“I have a plan,” Grant said. “Now go on.”

Gennaro led the kids away. The raptors continued slowly toward Grant, moving past the supercomputers, past the screens that still blinked endless sequences of computer-deciphered code. The raptors came forward without hesitation, sniffing the floor, repeatedly ducking their heads.

Grant heard the door click behind him and glanced over his shoulder. Everybody was standing on the other side of the glass door, watching him. Gennaro shook his head.

Grant knew what it meant. There was no door to the control room beyond. Gennaro and the kids were trapped in there.

It was up to him now.

Grant moved slowly, edging around the laboratory, leading the raptors away from Gennaro and the kids. He could see another door, nearer the front, which was marked TO LABORATORY. Whatever that meant. He had an idea, and he hoped he was right. The door had a blue biohazard sign. The raptors were coming closer. Grant turned and slammed into the door, and moved beyond it, into a deep, warm silence.

He turned.

Yes.

He was where he wanted to be, in the hatchery: beneath infrared lights, long tables, with rows of eggs and a low clinging mist. The rockers on the tables clicked and whirred in a steady motion. The mist poured over the sides of the tables and drifted to the floor, where it disappeared, evaporated.

Grant ran directly to the rear of the hatchery, into a glass-walled laboratory with ultraviolet light. His clothing glowed blue. He looked around at the glass reagents, beakers full of pipettes, glass dishes … all delicate laboratory equipment.

The raptors entered the room, cautiously at first, sniffing the humid air, looking at the long rocking tables of eggs. The lead animal wiped its bloody jaws with the back of its forearm. Silently the raptors passed between the long tables. The animals moved through the room in a coordinated way, ducking from time to time to peer beneath the tables.

They were looking for him.

Grant crouched, and moved to the back of the laboratory, looked up, and saw the metal hood marked with a skull and crossbones. A sign said CAUTION BIOGENIC TOXINS A4 PRECAUTIONS REQUIRED.

Grant remembered that Regis had said they were powerful poisons. Only a few molecules would kill instantaneously.…

The hood lay flush against the surface of the lab table. Grant could not slip his hand under it. He tried to open it, but there was no door, no handle, no way that he could see.… Grant rose slowly, and glanced back at the main room. The raptors were still moving among the tables.

He turned to the hood. He saw an odd metal fixture sunk into the surface of the table. It looked like an outdoor electrical outlet with a round cover. He flipped up the cover, saw a button, pressed it.

With a soft hiss, the hood slid upward, to the ceiling.

He saw glass shelves above him, and rows of bottles marked with a skull and crossbones. He peered at the labels: CCK-55 … TETRA-ALPHA SECRETIN … THYMOLEVIN X-1612…. The fluids glowed pale green in the ultraviolet light. Nearby he saw a glass dish with syringes in it. The syringes were small, each containing a tiny amount of green glowing fluid. Crouched in the blue darkness, Grant reached for the dish of syringes. The needles on the syringes were capped in plastic. He removed one cap, pulling it off with his teeth. He looked at the thin needle.

He moved forward. Toward the raptors.

He had devoted his whole life to studying dinosaurs. Now he would see how much he really knew. Velociraptors were small carnivorous dinosaurs, like oviraptors and dromaeosaurs, animals that were long thought to steal eggs. Just as certain modern birds ate the eggs of other birds, Grant had always assumed that velociraptors would eat dinosaur eggs if they could.

He crept forward to the nearest egg table in the hatchery. Slowly he reached up into the mist and took a large egg from the rocking table. The egg was almost the size of a football, cream-colored with faint pink speckling. He held the egg carefully while he stuck the needle through the shell, and injected the contents of the syringe. The egg glowed faint blue.

Grant bent down again. Beneath the table, he saw the legs of the raptors, and the mist pouring down from the tabletops. He rolled the glowing egg along the floor, toward the raptors. The raptors looked up, hearing the faint rumble as the egg rolled, and jerked their heads around. Then they resumed their slow stalking search.

The egg stopped several yards from the nearest raptor.

Damn!

Grant did it all again: quietly reaching up for an egg, bringing it down, injecting it, and rolling it toward the raptors. This time, the egg came to rest by the foot of one velociraptor. It rocked gently, clicking against the big toe claw.

The raptor looked down in surprise at this new gift. It bent over and sniffed the glowing egg. It rolled the egg with its snout along the floor for a moment.

And ignored it.

The velociraptor stood upright again, and slowly moved on, continuing to search.

It wasn’t working.

Grant reached for a third egg, and injected it with a fresh syringe. He held the glowing egg in his hands, and rolled it again. But he rolled this one fast, like a bowling ball. The egg rattled across the floor loudly.

One of the animals heard the sound—ducked down—saw it coming—and instinctively chased the moving object, gliding swiftly among the tables to intercept the egg as it rolled. The big jaws snapped down and bit into it, crushing the shell.

The raptor stood, pale albumen dripping from its jaws. It licked its lips noisily, and snorted. It bit again, and lapped the egg from the floor. But it didn’t seem to be in the least distressed. It bent over to eat again from the broken egg. Grant looked down to see what would happen.…

From across the room, the raptor saw him. It was looking right at him.

The velociraptor snarled menacingly. It moved toward Grant, crossing the room in long, incredibly swift strides. Grant was shocked to see it happening and froze in panic, when suddenly the animal made a gasping, gurgling sound and the big body pitched forward onto the ground. The heavy tail thumped the floor in spasms. The raptor continued to make choking sounds, punctuated by intermittent loud shrieks. Foam bubbled from its mouth. The head flopped back and forth. The tail slammed and thumped.

That’s one, Grant thought.

But it wasn’t dying very fast. It seemed to take forever to die. Grant reached up for another egg—and saw that the other raptors in the room were frozen in mid-action. They listened to the sound of the dying animal. One cocked its head, then another, and another. The first animal moved to look at the fallen raptor.

The dying raptor was now twitching, the whole body shaking on the floor. It made pitiful moans. So much foam bubbled from its mouth that Grant could hardly see the head any more. It flopped on the floor and moaned again.

The second raptor bent over the fallen animal, examining it. It appeared to be puzzled by these death throes. Cautiously, it looked at the foaming head, then moved down to the twitching neck, the heaving ribs, the legs.…

And it took a bite from the hind leg.

The dying animal snarled, and suddenly lifted its head and twisted, sinking its teeth into the neck of its attacker.

That’s two, Grant thought.

But the standing animal wrenched free. Blood flowed from its neck. It struck out with its hind claws, and with a single swift movement ripped open the belly of the fallen animal. Coils of intestine fell out like fat snakes. The screams of the dying raptor filled the room. The attacker turned away, as if fighting was suddenly too much trouble.

It crossed the room, ducked down, and came up with a glowing egg! Grant watched as the raptor bit into it, the glowing material dripping down its chin.

That makes two.

The second raptor was stricken almost instantly, coughing and pitching forward. As it fell, it knocked over a table. Dozens of eggs rolled everywhere across the floor. Grant looked at them in dismay.

There was still a third raptor left.

Grant had one more syringe. With so many eggs rolling on the floor, he would have to do something else. He was trying to decide what to do when the last animal snorted irritably. Grant looked up—the raptor had spotted him.

The final raptor did not move for a long time, it just stared. And then it slowly, quietly came forward. Stalking him. Bobbing up and down, looking first beneath the tables, then above them. It moved deliberately, cautiously, with none of the swiftness that it had displayed in a pack. A solitary animal now, it was careful. It never took its eyes off Grant. Grant looked around quickly. There was nowhere for him to hide. Nothing for him to do …

Grant’s gaze was fixed on the raptor, moving slowly, laterally. Grant moved, too. He tried to keep as many tables as he could between himself and the advancing animal. Slowly … slowly … he moved to the left.…

The raptor advanced in the dark red gloom of the hatchery. Its breath came in soft hisses, through flared nostrils.

Grant felt eggs breaking beneath his feet, the yolk sticking to the soles of his shoes. He crouched down, felt the bulge of the radio in his pocket.

The radio.

He pulled it from his pocket and turned it on.

“Hello. This is Grant.”

“Alan?” Ellie’s voice. “Alan?”

“Listen,” he said softly. “Just talk.”

“Alan, is that you?”

“Talk,” he said again, and he pushed the radio across the floor, away from him, toward the advancing raptor.

He crouched behind a table leg, and waited.

“Alan. Speak to me, please.”

Then a crackle, and silence. The radio remained silent. The raptor advanced. Soft hissing breath.

The radio was still silent.

What was the matter with her! Didn’t she understand? In the darkness, the raptor came closer.

“… Alan?”

The tinny voice from the radio made the big animal pause. It sniffed the air, as if sensing someone else in the room.

“Alan, it’s me. I don’t know if you can hear me.”

The raptor now turned away from Grant, and moved toward the radio.

“Alan … please …”

Why hadn’t he pushed the radio farther away? The raptor was going toward it, but it was close. The big foot came down very near him. Grant could see the pebbled skin, the soft green glow. The streaks of dried blood on the curved claw. He could smell the strong reptile odor.

“Alan, listen to me.… Alan?”

The raptor bent over, poked at the radio on the floor, tentatively. Its body was turned away from Grant. The big tail was right above Grant’s head. Grant reached up and jabbed the syringe deep into the flesh of the tail, and injected the poison.

The velociraptor snarled and jumped. With frightening speed it swung back toward Grant, jaws wide. It snapped, its jaws closing on the table leg, and jerked its head up. The table was knocked away, and Grant fell back, now completely exposed. The raptor loomed over him, rising up, its head banging into the infrared lights above, making them swing crazily.

“Alan?”

The raptor reared back, and lifted its clawed foot to kick. Grant rolled, and the foot slammed down, just missing him. He felt a searing sharp pain along his shoulder blades, the sudden warm flow of blood over his shirt. He rolled across the floor, crushing eggs, smearing his hands, his face. The raptor kicked again, smashing down on the radio, spattering sparks. It snarled in rage, and kicked a third time, and Grant came to the wall, nowhere else to go, and the animal raised its foot a final time.

And toppled backward.

The animal was wheezing. Foam came from its mouth.

Gennaro and the kids came into the room. Grant signaled them to stay back. The girl looked at the dying animal and said softly, “Wow.”

Gennaro helped Grant to his feet. They all turned, and ran for the control room.

CONTROL

Tim was astonished to find the screen in the control room was now flashing on and off. Lex said, “What happened?”

Tim saw Dr. Grant staring at the screen, and gingerly moving his hand toward the keyboard. “I don’t know about computers,” Grant said, shaking his head.

But Tim was already sliding into the seat. He touched the screen rapidly. On the video monitors, he could see the boat moving closer to Puntarenas. It was now only about two hundred yards from the dock. On the other monitor, he saw the lodge, with the raptors hanging down from the ceiling. On the radio, he heard their snarls.

“Do something, Timmy,” Lex said.

He pushed SETGRIDS DNL, even though it was flashing.

The screen answered:

WARNING: COMMAND EXECUTION ABORTED (AUX POWER LOW)

“What does that mean?” Tim said.

Gennaro snapped his fingers. “That happened before. It means auxiliary power is low. You have to turn on main power.”

“I do?”

He pushed ELECTRICAL MAIN.

Tim groaned.

“What are you doing now?” Grant said. The whole screen was starting to flash.

Tim pushed MAIN.

Nothing happened. The screen continued to flash.

Tim pushed MAIN GRIP P. He felt sick to his stomach with fear.

MAIN POWER GRID NOT ACTIVE/AUXILIARY POWER ONLY

The screen was still flashing. He pushed MAIN SET 1.

MAIN POWER ACTIVATED

All the lights in the room came on. All the monitor screens stopped flashing. “Hey! All right!”

Tim pressed RESET GRIDS. Nothing happened for a moment. He glanced at the video monitors, then back at the main screen.

Grant said something that Tim didn’t hear, he only heard the tension in his voice. He was looking at Tim, worried.

Tim felt his heart thumping in his chest. Lex was yelling at him. He didn’t want to look at the video monitor anymore. He could hear the sound of the bars bending in the lodge, and the raptors snarling. He heard Malcolm say, “Dear God …”

He pushed LODGE.

SPECIFY GRID NUMBER TO RESET.

For a frozen interminable moment he couldn’t remember the number, but then he remembered F4, and he pressed that.

ACTIVATING LODGE GRID F4 NOW.

On the video monitor he saw an explosion of sparks, sputtering down from the ceiling of the hotel room. The monitor flared white. Lex shouted “What did you do!” but almost immediately the image came back and they could see that the raptors were caught between the bars, writhing and screaming in a hot cascade of sparks while Muldoon and the others cheered, their voices tinny over the radio.

“That’s it,” Grant said, slapping Tim on the back. “That’s it! You did it!”

They were all standing and jumping up and down when Lex said, “What about the ship?”

“The what?”

“The ship,” she said, and pointed to the screen.

On the monitor, the buildings beyond the bow of the ship were much larger, and moving to the right, as the ship turned left and prepared to dock. He saw crewmen heading out to the bow, preparing to tie up.

Tim scrambled back to his seat, and stared at the startup screen. He studied the screen. TeleCom VBB and TeleCom RSD both looked like they might have something to do with telephones. He pressed TELECOM RSD.

YOU HAVE 23 WAITING CALLS AND/OR MESSAGES.

DO YOU WISH TO RECEIVE THEM NOW?

He pushed NO.

“Maybe the ship was one of the waiting calls,” Lex said. “Maybe that way you could get the phone number!”

He ignored her.

ENTER THE NUMBER YOU WISH TO CALL OR PRESS F7 FOR DIRECTORY.

He pushed F7 and suddenly names and numbers spilled over the screen, an enormous directory. It wasn’t alphabetical, and it took a while to scan it visually before he found what he was looking for:

VSL ANNE B. (FREDDY) 708-3902

Now all he had to do was figure out how to dial. He pushed a row of buttons at the bottom of the screen:

DIAL NOW OR DIAL LATER?

He pushed DIAL NOW.

WE’RE SORRY, YOUR CALL CANNOT BE COMPLETED AS DIALED. {ERROR-598}

PLEASE TRY AGAIN

He tried it again.

He heard a dial tone, then the tone of the numbers being automatically dialed in rapid succession.

“Is that it?” Grant said.

“Pretty good, Timmy,” Lex said. “But they’re almost there.” On the screen, they could see the prow of the ship closing on the Puntarenas dock. They heard a high-pitched squeal, and then a voice said, “Ah, hello, John, this is Freddy. Do you read me, over?”

Tim picked up a phone on the console but heard only a dial tone.

“Ah, hello, John, this is Freddy, over?”

“Answer it,” Lex said.

Now they were all picking up phones, lifting every receiver in sight, but they heard only dial tones. Finally Tim saw a phone mounted on the side of the console with a blinking light.

“Ah, hello, control. This is Freddy. Do you read me, over?”

Tim grabbed the receiver. “Hello, this is Tim Murphy, and I need you to—”

“Ah, say again, didn’t get that, John.”

“Don’t land the boat! Do you hear me?”

There was a pause. Then a puzzled voice said, “Sounds like some damn kid.”

Tim said, “Don’t land the ship! Come back to the island!”

The voices sounded distant and scratchy. “Did he—name was Murphy?” And another voice said, “I didn’t get—name.”

Tim looked frantically at the others. Gennaro reached for the phone. “Let me do this. Can you get his name?”

There was the sharp crackle of static. “—got to be a joke or else—a—frigging ham operator—omething.”

Tim was working on the keyboard, there was probably some kind of a way to find out who Freddy was.…

“Can you hear me?” Gennaro said, into the phone. “If you can hear me, answer me now, over.”

“Son,” came the drawled reply, “we don’t know who the hell you are, but you’re not funny, and we’re about to dock and we’ve got work to do. Now, identify yourself properly or get off this channel.”

Tim watched as the screen printed out FARRELL, FREDERICK D. (CAPT.).

“Try this for identification, Captain Farrell,” Gennaro said. “If you don’t turn that boat around and return to this island immediately, you will be found in violation of Section 509 of the Uniform Maritime Act, you will be subject to revocation of license, penalties in excess of fifty thousand dollars, and five years in jail. Do you hear that?”

There was a silence.

“Do you copy that, Captain Farrell?”

And then, distantly, they heard a voice say, “I copy,” and another voice said, “All ahead stern.” The boat began to turn away from the dock.

Lex began to cheer. Tim collapsed back in the chair, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

Grant said, “What’s the Uniform Maritime Act?”

“Who the hell knows?” Gennaro said.

They all watched the screen in satisfaction. The boat was definitely heading away from the shore.

“I guess the hard part’s finished,” Gennaro said.

Grant shook his head. “The hard part,” he said, “is just beginning.”

SEVENTH ITERATION

“Increasingly, the mathematics will demand the courage to face its implications.”

IAN MALCOLM

DESTROYING THE WORLD

They moved Malcolm to another room in the lodge, to a clean bed. Hammond seemed to revive, and began bustling around, straightening up. “Well,” he said, “at least disaster is averted.”

“What disaster is that?” Malcolm said, sighing.

“Well,” Hammond said, “they didn’t get free and overrun the world.”

Malcolm sat up on one elbow. “You were worried about that?”

“Surely that’s what was at stake,” Hammond said. “These animals, lacking predators, might get out and destroy the planet.”

“You egomaniacal idiot,” Malcolm said, in fury. “Do you have any idea what you are talking about? You think you can destroy the planet? My, what intoxicating power you must have.” Malcolm sank back on the bed. “You can’t destroy this planet. You can’t even come close.”

“Most people believe,” Hammond said stiffly, “that the planet is in jeopardy.”

“Well, it’s not,” Malcolm said.

“All the experts agree that our planet is in trouble.”

Malcolm sighed. “Let me tell you about our planet,” he said. “Our planet is four and a half billion years old. There has been life on this planet for nearly that long. Three point eight billion years. The first bacteria. And, later, the first multicellular animals, then the first complex creatures, in the sea, on the land. Then the great sweeping ages of animals—the amphibians, the dinosaurs, the mammals, each lasting millions upon millions of years. Great dynasties of creatures arising, flourishing, dying away. All this happening against a background of continuous and violent upheaval, mountain ranges thrust up and eroded away, cometary impacts, volcanic eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving … Endless, constant and violent change … Even today, the greatest geographical feature on the planet comes from two great continents colliding, buckling to make the Himalayan mountain range over millions of years. The planet has survived everything, in its time. It will certainly survive us.”

Hammond frowned. “Just because it lasted a long time,” he said, “doesn’t mean it is permanent. If there was a radiation accident …”

“Suppose there was,” Malcolm said. “Let’s say we had a bad one, and all the plants and animals died, and the earth was clicking hot for a hundred thousand years. Life would survive somewhere—under the soil, or perhaps frozen in Arctic ice. And after all those years, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would again spread over the planet. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. And of course it would be very different from what it is now. But the earth would survive our folly. Life would survive our folly. Only we,” Malcolm said, “think it wouldn’t.”

Hammond said, “Well, if the ozone layer gets thinner—”

“There will be more ultraviolet radiation reaching the surface. So what?”

“Well. It’ll cause skin cancer.”

Malcolm shook his head. “Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It’s powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation.”

“And many others will die out,” Hammond said.

Malcolm sighed. “You think this is the first time such a thing has happened? Don’t you know about oxygen?”

“I know it’s necessary for life.”

“It is now,” Malcolm said. “But oxygen is actually a metabolic poison. It’s a corrosive gas, like fluorine, which is used to etch glass. And when oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells—say, around three billion years ago—it created a crisis for all other life on our planet. Those plant cells were polluting the environment with a deadly poison. They were exhaling a lethal gas, and building up its concentration. A planet like Venus has less than one percent oxygen. On earth, the concentration of oxygen was going up rapidly—five, ten, eventually twenty-one percent! Earth had an atmosphere of pure poison! Incompatible with life!”

Hammond looked irritated. “So what is your point? That modern pollutants will be incorporated, too?”

“No,” Malcolm said. “My point is that life on earth can take care of itself. In the thinking of a human being, a hundred years is a long time. A hundred years ago, we didn’t have cars and airplanes and computers and vaccines.… It was a whole different world. But to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can’t imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven’t got the humility to try. We have been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we are gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.”

“And we very well might be gone,” Hammond said, huffing.

“Yes,” Malcolm said. “We might.”

“So what are you saying? We shouldn’t care about the environment?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then what?”

Malcolm coughed, and stared into the distance. “Let’s be clear. The planet is not in jeopardy. We are in jeopardy. We haven’t got the power to destroy the planet—or to save it. But we might have the power to save ourselves.”

UNDER CONTROL

Four hours had passed. It was afternoon; the sun was falling. The air conditioning was back on in the control room, and the computer was functioning properly. As near as they could determine, out of twenty-four people on the island, eight were dead and six more were missing. The visitor center and the Safari Lodge were both secure, and the northern perimeter seemed to be clear of dinosaurs. They had called authorities in San José for help. The Costa Rican National Guard was on its way, as well as an air ambulance to carry Malcolm to a hospital. But over the telephone, the Costa Rican guard had been distinctly cautious; undoubtedly calls would go back and forth between San José and Washington before help was finally sent to the island. And now it was growing late in the day; if the helicopters did not arrive soon, they would have to wait until morning. In the meantime, there was nothing to do but wait. The ship was returning; the crew had discovered three young raptors scampering about in one of the aft holds, and had killed the animals. On Isla Nublar, the immediate danger appeared to have passed; everyone was in either the visitor center or the lodge. Tim had gotten quite good with the computer, and he flashed up a new screen.

“What the hell is it doing now?” Gennaro said. “Now it says there are fewer animals?”

Grant nodded. “Probably.”

Ellie said, “Jurassic Park is finally coming under control.”

“Meaning what?”

“Equilibrium.” Grant pointed to the monitors. On one of them, the hypsilophodonts leapt into the air as a pack of velociraptors entered the field from the west.

“The fences have been down for hours,” Grant said. “The animals are mingling with each other. Populations reaching equilibrium—a true Jurassic equilibrium.”

“I don’t think it was supposed to happen,” Gennaro said. “The animals were never supposed to mix.”

“Well, they are.”

On another monitor, Grant saw a pack of raptors racing at full speed across an open field toward a four-ton hadrosaur. The hadrosaur turned to flee, and one of the raptors jumped onto its back, biting into the long neck, while others raced forward, circled around it, nipped at its legs, leapt up to slash at the belly with their powerful claws. Within minutes, six raptors had brought down the larger animal.

Grant stared, silently.

Ellie said, “Is it the way you imagined?”

“I don’t know what I imagined,” he said. He watched the monitor. “No, not exactly.”

Muldoon said quietly, “You know, it appears all the adult raptors are out right now.”

Grant didn’t pay much attention at first. He just watched the monitors, the interaction of the great animals. In the south, the stegosaur was swinging its spiked tail, warily circling the baby tyrannosaur, which watched it, bemused, and occasionally lunged forward to nip ineffectually at the spikes. In the western quadrant, the adult triceratopsians were fighting among themselves, charging and locking horns. One animal already lay wounded and dying.

Muldoon said, “We’ve got about an hour of good daylight left, Dr. Grant. If you want to try and find that nest.”

“Right,” Grant said. “I do.”

“I was thinking,” Muldoon said, “that, when the Costa Ricans come, they will probably imagine this island to be a military problem. Something to destroy as soon as possible.”

“Damn right,” Gennaro said.

“They’ll bomb it from the air,” Muldoon said. “Perhaps napalm, perhaps nerve gas as well. But from the air.”

“I hope they do,” Gennaro said. “This island is too dangerous. Every animal on this island must be destroyed, and the sooner the better.”

Grant said, “That’s not satisfactory.” He got to his feet. “Let’s get started.”

“I don’t think you understand, Alan,” Gennaro said. “It’s my opinion that this island is too dangerous. It must be destroyed. Every animal on this island must be destroyed, and that’s what the Costa Rican guard will do. I think we should leave it in their capable hands. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Perfectly,” Grant said again.

“Then what’s your problem?” Gennaro said. “It’s a military operation. Let them do it.”

Grant’s back ached, where the raptor had clawed him. “No,” he said. “We have to take care of it.”

“Leave it to the experts,” Gennaro said.

Grant remembered how he had found Gennaro, just six hours earlier, huddled and terrified in the cab of a truck in the maintenance building. And suddenly he lost his temper and slammed the lawyer up against the concrete wall. “Listen, you little bastard, you have a responsibility to this situation and you’re going to start living up to it.”

“I am,” Gennaro said, coughing.

“No, you’re not. You’ve shirked your responsibility all along, from the very beginning.”

“The hell—”

“You sold investors on an undertaking you didn’t fully understand. You were part owner of a business you failed to supervise. You did not check the activities of a man whom you knew from experience to be a liar, and you permitted that man to screw around with the most dangerous technology in human history. I’d say you shirked your responsibility.”

Gennaro coughed again. “Well, now I’m taking responsibility.”

“No,” Grant said. “You’re still shirking it. And you can’t do that any more.” He released Gennaro, who bent over, gasping for breath. Grant turned to Muldoon. “What have we got for weapons?”

Muldoon said, “We’ve got some control nets, and shock prods.”

“How good are these shock prods?” Grant said.

“They’re like bang sticks for sharks. They have an explosive capacitor tip, delivers a shock on contact. High voltage, low amps. Not fatal, but it’s definitely incapacitating.”

“That’s not going to do it,” Grant said. “Not in the nest.”

“What nest?” Gennaro said, coughing.

“The raptor nest,” Ellie said.

“The raptor nest?”

Grant was saying, “Have you got any radio collars?”

“I’m sure we do,” Muldoon said.

“Get one. And is there anything else that can be used for defense?”

Muldoon shook his head.

“Well, get whatever you can.”

Muldoon went away. Grant turned to Gennaro. “Your island is a mess, Mr. Gennaro. Your experiment is a mess. It has to be cleaned up. But you can’t do that until you know the extent of the mess. And that means finding the nests on the island. Especially the raptor nests. They’ll be hidden. We have to find them, and inspect them, and count the eggs. We have to account for every animal born on this island. Then we can burn it down. But first we have a little work to do.”

Ellie was looking at the wall map, which now showed the animal ranges. Tim was working the keyboard. She pointed to the map. “The raptors are localized in the southern area, down where the volcanic steam fields are. Maybe they like the warmth.”

“Is there any place to hide down there?”

“Turns out there is,” she said. “There’s massive concrete waterworks, to control flooding in the southern flatlands. Big underground area. Water and shade.”

Grant nodded. “Then that’s where they’ll be.”

Ellie said, “I think there’s an entrance from the beach, too.” She turned to the consoles and said, “Tim, show us the cutaways on the waterworks.” Tim wasn’t listening. “Tim?”

He was hunched over the keyboard. “Just a minute,” he said. “I found something.”

“What is it?”

“It’s an unmarked storage room. I don’t know what’s there.”

“Then it might have weapons,” Grant said.

They were all behind the maintenance building, unlocking a steel storm door, lifting it up into the sunlight, to reveal concrete steps going down into the earth. “Damned Arnold,” Muldoon said, as he hobbled down the steps. “He must have known this was here all along.”

“Maybe not,” Grant said. “He didn’t try to go here.”

“Well, then, Hammond knew. Somebody knew.”

“Where is Hammond now?”

“Still in the lodge.”

They reached the bottom of the stairs, and came upon rows of gas masks hanging on the wall, in plastic containers. They shone their flashlights deeper into the room and saw several heavy glass cubes, two feet high, with steel caps. Grant could see small dark spheres inside the cubes. It was like being in a room full of giant pepper mills, he thought.

Muldoon opened the cap of one, reached in, and withdrew a sphere. He turned it in the light, frowning. “I’ll be damned.”

“What is it?” Grant said.

“MORO-12,” Muldoon said. “It’s an inhalation nerve gas. These are grenades. Lots and lots of grenades.”

“Let’s get started,” Grant said grimly.

“It likes me,” Lex said, smiling. They were standing in the garage of the visitor center, by the little raptor that Grant had captured in the tunnel. She was petting the raptor through the cage bars. The animal rubbed up against her hand.

“I’d be careful there,” Muldoon said. “They can give a nasty bite.”

“He likes me,” Lex said. “His name is Clarence.”

“Clarence?”

“Yes,” Lex said.

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

Lex was still petting the raptor, reaching through the cage. “I bet he’ll let me put it on him,” she said.

“I wouldn’t try,” Muldoon said. “They’re unpredictable.”

“I bet he’ll let me,” she said.

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

“I’ll be damned,” Muldoon said.

“It’s a chameleon,” Lex said.

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

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

“What phenomenon is that?”

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

“You’re kidding,” Gennaro said. “And what makes it happen?”

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

“And you think that’s what happened to the dinosaurs?”

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

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

The animal wouldn’t leave.

“Go on, shoo!” Lex said. “Go home!”

The raptor turned, and ran off into the foliage.

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

“Nobody knows,” Grant said.

“But I thought you’d dug them up.”

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

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

Grant shook his head. “You have to realize: we don’t know all the details about the nesting behavior of living reptiles, like crocodiles and alligators. They’re difficult animals to study.” But it was known that in the case of American alligators, only the female guarded the nest, awaiting the time of hatching. The bull alligator spent days in early spring lying beside the female in a mating pair, blowing bubbles on her cheeks to bring her to receptivity, finally causing her to lift her tail and allow him to insert his penis. By the time the female built her nest, two months later, the male was long gone. The female guarded her cone-shaped, three-foot-high nest ferociously, and when the hatchlings began to squeak and emerge from their shells, she often helped break open the eggs, then nudged them toward the water, sometimes carrying them in her mouth.

“So adult alligators protect the young?”

“Yes,” Grant said. “And there is also a kind of group protection. Young alligators make a distinctive distress cry, and it brings any adult who hears it—parent or not—to their assistance with a full-fledged, violent attack. Not a threat display. A full-on attack.”

“Oh.” Gennaro fell silent.

“But dinos aren’t reptiles,” Muldoon said laconically.

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

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

“No,” Grant said. “I don’t.”

“Well,” Gennaro said. “So much for the damn experts.”

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

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

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

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

“Doesn’t this bother you?” Gennaro said. “I mean, worry you?”

“We’ve got to do it,” Grant said. He didn’t say anything else.

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

“Maybe he is,” she said. “But he’s also thought about this for his whole life.”

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

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

“Was that the raptor?” Ellie said.

“I think so. Or another one. Juvenile, anyway.”

She said, “Leading us on?”

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

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

Gennaro frowned. “How smart are they?” he said.

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

“But I’ve never heard of anybody killed by a parrot,” Gennaro grumbled.

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

“Where’d it go?” Ellie said.

Grant was listening to the earphones. The beeping stopped. “He’s gone.”

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

“No way,” Gennaro said. “No way I’m going down there.”

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

“You can’t see anything that way,” Gennaro said.

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

“Sounds like the nest, all right,” Ellie said.

“But you can’t see anything,” Gennaro said. He wiped the sweat off his forehead.

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

“You can’t be serious about going down there,” Gennaro said.

Grant nodded. “It doesn’t thrill me. I’ll go first, then Ellie, then you come after.”

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

“Ellie, you got the flashlight?”

She handed the flashlight to Grant.

“What about it?” Gennaro said. “What do you say?”

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

“No …”

“It generally causes convulsions. Bad convulsions.”

“Well, I’m sorry if it’s unpleasant, but—”

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

“But—”

“You made these animals, Mr. Gennaro.”

“I didn’t.”

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

“I’m not a little nervous,” Gennaro said. “I’m scared shi—”

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

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

The hole gaped, empty and black.

“What happened to him?” Gennaro said, alarmed.

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

There was a long silence. Then they heard faintly: “I’m here.”

“Is everything all right, Alan?”

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

“Everything’s fine,” he said.

ALMOST PARADIGM

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

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

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

“Everything … parad …” Malcolm said, tossing on the pillow.

“Is he waking up?” Hammond said.

Harding shook his head.

“What did he say? Something about paradise?”

“I didn’t catch it,” Harding said.

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

“I don’t think so, no,” Harding said. “I think this area is all right.”

“Well, look, I’m going outside for a bit.”

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

“I’ll be back soon.”

“All right.”

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

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

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

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

Wu was the reason.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He was lying face down in a little stream.

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

Almost certainly broken.

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

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

“That’s neat,” Lex said. “That’s better than the other one.”

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

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

“Sure,” Tim said. “We just twist this thing here.…”

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

Jesus.

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

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

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

The kids!

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

“Neat one,” said the little girl. “Do it again.”

Those damned kids!

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

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

Malcolm’s voice was no louder than a whisper. “Everything … looks different … on the other side,” he said.

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

“When … shifts,” Malcolm said.

“Shifts?”

Malcolm didn’t answer. His dry lips moved. “Paradigm,” he said finally.

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

“No,” Malcolm said. “Not … paradigm … beyond …”

“Beyond paradigm?” Harding said.

“Don’t care about … what … anymore …”

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

“What don’t you care about?”

“Anything,” Malcolm said. “Because … everything looks different … on the other side.”

And he smiled.

DESCENT

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

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

The hole gaped black.

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

“Yes, you are.”

“I can’t do this. I can’t.”

“They’re waiting for you,” Muldoon said. “You have to.”

“Christ only knows what’s down there,” Gennaro said. “I’m telling you, I can’t do it.”

“You have to.”

Gennaro turned away, looked at the hole, looked back. “I can’t. You can’t make me.”

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

“No.”

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

Gennaro looked at the stick. “You wouldn’t.”

“I think you’d better go down and count those animals,” Muldoon said. “And you better hurry.”

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

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

“That’s it,” Muldoon said.

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

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

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

And then he fell.

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

“—okay?”

“He looks okay, yes.”

“He’s breathing.…”

“Fine.”

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

“Why is everybody whispering?” he said.

“Because.” She pointed.

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

Dozens of eyes. All around him.

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

Gennaro did not dare to breathe.

Two raptors!

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t get it,” Gennaro whispered. “Why aren’t they attacking?”

Grant shook his head. “They must not see us. And there aren’t any eggs at the moment.… Makes them more relaxed.”

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

“Long enough to do the count,” Grant said.

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

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

The juvenile whimpered.

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

“You think I can take it off ?” she asked.

“Just do it quickly.”

“Oo-kay,” she said, squatting beside the small animal. It whimpered again.

The adults snorted, bobbed their heads.

Ellie petted the little juvenile, trying to soothe it, to silence its whimpering. She moved her hands toward the leather collar, lifted back the Velcro tab with a tearing sound. The adults jerked their heads.

Then one began to walk toward her.

“Oh shit,” Gennaro said, under his breath.

“Don’t move,” Grant said. “Stay calm.”

The adult walked past them, its long curved toes clicking on the concrete. The animal paused in front of Ellie, who stayed crouched by the juvenile, behind a steel box. The juvenile was exposed, and Ellie’s hand was still on the collar. The adult raised its head, and sniffed the air. The adult’s big head was very close to her hand, but it could not see her because of the junction box. A tongue flicked out, tentatively.

Grant reached for a gas grenade, plucked it from his belt, held his thumb on the pin. Gennaro put out a restraining hand, shook his head, nodded to Ellie.

She wasn’t wearing her mask.

Grant set the grenade down, reached for the shock prod. The adult was still very close to Ellie.

Ellie eased the leather strap off. The metal of the buckle clinked on concrete. The adult’s head jerked fractionally, and then cocked to one side, curious. It was moving forward again to investigate, when the little juvenile squeaked happily and scampered away. The adult remained by Ellie. Then finally it turned, and walked back to the center of the nest.

Gennaro gave a long exhalation. “Jesus. Can we leave?”

“No,” Grant said. “But I think we can get some work done now.”

In the phosphorescent green glow of the night-vision goggles, Grant peered down into the room from the ledge, looking at the first nest. It was made of mud and straw, formed into a broad, shallow basket shape. He counted the remains of fourteen eggs. Of course he couldn’t count the actual shells from this distance, and in any case they were long since broken and scattered over the floor, but he was able to count the indentations in the mud. Apparently the raptors made their nests shortly before the eggs were laid, and the eggs left a permanent impression in the mud. He also saw evidence that at least one had broken. He credited thirteen animals.

The second nest had broken in half. But Grant estimated it had contained nine eggshells. The third nest had fifteen eggs, but it appeared that three eggs had been broken early.

“What’s that total?” Gennaro said.

“Thirty-four born,” Grant said.

“And how many do you see?”

Grant shook his head. The animals were running all over the cavernous interior space, darting in and out of the light.

“I’ve been watching,” Ellie said, shining her light down at her notepad. “You’d have to take photos to be sure, but the snout markings of the infants are all different. My count is thirty-three.”

“And juveniles?”

“Twenty-two. But, Alan—do you notice anything funny about them?”

“Like what?” Grant whispered.

“How they arrange themselves spatially. They’re falling into some kind of a pattern or arrangement in the room.”

Grant frowned. He said, “It’s pretty dark.…”

“No, look. Look for yourself. Watch the little ones. When they are playing, they tumble and run every which way. But in between, when the babies are standing around, notice how they orient their bodies. They face either that wall, or the opposite wall. It’s like they line up.”

“I don’t know, Ellie. You think there’s a colony metastructure? Like bees?”

“No, not exactly,” she said. “It’s more subtle than that. It’s just a tendency.”

“And the babies do it?”

“No. They all do it. The adults do it, too. Watch them. I’m telling you, they line up.”

Grant frowned. It seemed as if she was right. The animals engaged in all sorts of behavior, but during pauses, moments when they were watching or relaxing, they seemed to orient themselves in particular ways, almost as if there were invisible lines on the floor.

“Beats me,” Grant said. “Maybe there’s a breeze.…”

“I don’t feel one, Alan.”

“What are they doing? Some kind of social organization expressed as spatial structure?”

“That doesn’t make sense,” she said. “Because they all do it.”

Gennaro flipped up his watch. “I knew this thing would come in handy one day.” Beneath the watch face was a compass.

Grant said, “You have much use for that in court?”

“No.” Gennaro shook his head. “My wife gave it to me,” he explained, “for my birthday.” He peered at the compass. “Well,” he said, “they’re not lined up according to anything.… I guess they’re sort of northeast-southwest, something like that.”

Ellie said, “Maybe they’re hearing something, turning their heads so they can hear.…”

Grant frowned.

“Or maybe it’s just ritual behavior,” she said, “species-specific behavior that serves to identify them to one another. But maybe it doesn’t have any broader meaning.” Ellie sighed. “Or maybe they’re weird. Maybe dinosaurs are weird. Or maybe it’s a kind of communication.”

Grant was thinking the same thing. Bees could communicate spatially, by doing a kind of dance. Perhaps dinosaurs could do the same thing.

Gennaro watched them and said, “Why don’t they go outside?”

“They’re nocturnal.”

“Yes, but it almost seems like they’re hiding.”

Grant shrugged. In the next moment, the infants began to squeak and hop excitedly. The adults watched curiously for a moment. And then, with hoots and cries that echoed in the dark cavernous space, all the dinosaurs wheeled and ran, heading down the concrete tunnel, into the darkness beyond.

HAMMOND

John Hammond sat down heavily in the damp earth of the hillside and tried to catch his breath. Dear God, it was hot, he thought. Hot and humid. He felt as if he were breathing through a sponge.

He looked down at the streambed, now forty feet below. It seemed like hours since he had left the trickling water and begun to climb the hill. His ankle was now swollen and dark purple. He couldn’t put any weight on it at all. He was forced to hop up the hill on his other leg, which now burned with pain from the exertion.

And he was thirsty. Before leaving the stream behind, he had drunk from it, even though he knew this was unwise. Now he felt dizzy, and the world sometimes swirled around him. He was having trouble with his balance. But he knew he had to climb the hill, and get back to the path above. Hammond thought he had heard footsteps on the path several times during the previous hour, and each time he had shouted for help. But somehow his voice hadn’t carried far enough; he hadn’t been rescued. And so, as the afternoon wore on, he began to realize that he would have to climb the hillside, injured leg or not. And that was what he was doing now.

Those damned kids.

Hammond shook his head, trying to clear it. He had been climbing for more than an hour, and he had gone only a third of the distance up the hill. And he was tired, panting like an old dog. His leg throbbed. He was dizzy. Of course, he knew perfectly well that he was in no danger—he was almost within sight of his bungalow, for God’s sake—but he had to admit he was tired. Sitting on the hillside, he found he didn’t really want to move any more.

And why shouldn’t he be tired? he thought. He was seventy-six years old. That was no age to be climbing around hillsides. Even though Hammond was in peak condition for a man his age. Personally, he expected to live to be a hundred. It was just a matter of taking care of yourself, of taking care of things as they came up. Certainly he had plenty of reasons to live. Other parks to build. Other wonders to create—

He heard a squeaking, then a chittering sound. Some kind of small birds, hopping in the undergrowth. He’d been hearing small animals all afternoon. There were all kinds of things out here: rats, possums, snakes.

The squeaking got louder, and small bits of earth rolled down the hillside past him. Something was coming. Then he saw a dark green animal hopping down the hill toward him—and another—and another.

Compys, he thought with a chill.

Scavengers.

The compys didn’t look dangerous. They were about as big as chickens, and they moved up and down with little nervous jerks, like chickens. But he knew they were poisonous. Their bites had a slow-acting poison that they used to kill crippled animals.

Crippled animals, he thought, frowning.

The first of the compys perched on the hillside, staring at him. It stayed about five feet away, beyond his reach, and just watched him. Others came down soon after, and they stood in a row. Watching. They hopped up and down and chittered and waved their little clawed hands.

“Shoo! Get out!” he said, and threw a rock.

The compys backed away, but only a foot or two. They weren’t afraid. They seemed to know he couldn’t hurt them.

Angrily, Hammond tore a branch from a tree and swiped at them with it. The compys dodged, nipped at the leaves, squeaked happily. They seemed to think he was playing a game.

He thought again about the poison. He remembered that one of the animal handlers had been bitten by a compy in a cage. The handler had said the poison was like a narcotic—peaceful, dreamy. No pain.

You just wanted to go to sleep.

The hell with that, he thought. Hammond picked up a rock, aimed carefully, and threw it, striking one compy flat in the chest. The little animal shrieked in alarm as it was knocked backward, and rolled over its tail. The other animals immediately backed away.

Better.

Hammond turned away, and started to climb the hill once more. Holding branches in both hands, he hopped on his left leg, feeling the ache in his thigh. He had not gone more than ten feet when one of the compys jumped onto his back. He flung his arms wildly, knocking the animal away, but lost his balance and slid back down the hillside. As he came to a stop, a second compy sprang forward, and took a tiny nip from his hand. He looked with horror, seeing the blood flow over his fingers. He turned and began to scramble up the hillside again.

Another compy jumped onto his shoulder, and he felt a brief pain as it bit the back of his neck. He shrieked and smacked the animal away. He turned to face the animals, breathing hard, and they stood all around him, hopping up and down and cocking their heads, watching him. From the bite on his neck, he felt warmth flow through his shoulders, down his spine.

Lying on his back on the hillside, he began to feel strangely relaxed, detached from himself. But he realized that nothing was wrong. No error had been made. Malcolm was quite incorrect in his analysis. Hammond lay very still, as still as a child in its crib, and he felt wonderfully peaceful. When the next compy came up and bit his ankle, he made only a halfhearted effort to kick it away. The little animals edged closer. Soon they were chittering all around him, like excited birds. He raised his head as another compy jumped onto his chest, the animal surprisingly light and delicate. Hammond felt only a slight pain, very slight, as the compy bent to chew his neck.

THE BEACH

Chasing the dinosaurs, following the curves and slopes of concrete, Grant suddenly burst out through a cavernous opening, and found himself standing on the beach, looking at the Pacific Ocean. All around him, the young velociraptors were scampering and kicking in the sand. But, one by one, the animals moved back into the shade of the palm trees at the edge of the mangrove swamp, and there they stood, lined up in their peculiar fashion, watching the ocean. They stared fixedly to the south.

“I don’t get it,” Gennaro said.

“I don’t, either.” Grant said, “except that they clearly don’t like the sun.” It wasn’t very sunny on the beach; a light mist blew, and the ocean was hazy. But why had they suddenly left the nest? What had brought the entire colony to the beach?

Gennaro flipped up the dial on his watch, and looked at the way the animals were standing. “Northeast-southwest. Same as before.”

Behind the beach, deeper in the woods, they heard the hum of the electric fence. “At least we know how they get outside the fence,” Ellie said.

Then they heard the throb of marine diesels, and through the mist they saw a ship appearing in the south. A large freighter, it slowly moved north.

“So that’s why they came out?” Gennaro said.

Grant nodded. “They must have heard it coming.”

As the freighter passed, all the animals watched it, standing silent except for the occasional chirp or squeak. Grant was struck by the coordination of their behavior, the way they moved and acted as a group. But perhaps it was not really so mysterious. In his mind, he reviewed the sequence of events that had begun in the cave.

First the infants had been agitated. Then the adults had noticed. And finally all the animals had stampeded to the beach. That sequence seemed to imply that the younger animals, with keener hearing, had detected the boat first. Then the adults had led the troop out onto the beach. And as Grant looked, he saw that the adults were in charge now. There was a clear spatial organization along the beach, and as the animals settled down, it was not loose and shifting, the way it had been inside. Rather, it was quite regular, almost regimented. The adults were spaced every ten yards or so, each adult surrounded by a cluster of infants. The juveniles were positioned between, and slightly ahead of, the adults.

But Grant also saw that all the adults were not equal. There was a female with a distinctive stripe along her head, and she was in the very center of the group as it ranged along the beach. That same female had stayed in the center of the nesting area, too. He guessed that, like certain monkey troops, the raptors were organized around a matriarchal pecking order, and that this striped animal was the alpha female of the colony. The males, he saw, were arranged defensively at the perimeter of the group.

But unlike monkeys, which were loosely and flexibly organized, the dinosaurs settled into a rigid arrangement—almost a military formation, it seemed. Then, too, there was the oddity of the northeast-southwest spatial orientation. That was beyond Grant. But, in another sense, he was not surprised. Paleontologists had been digging up bones for so long that they had forgotten how little information could be gleaned from a skeleton. Bones might tell you something about the gross appearance of an animal, its height and weight. They might tell you something about how the muscles attached, and therefore something about the crude behavior of the animal during life. They might give you clues to the few diseases that affected bone. But a skeleton was a poor thing, really, from which to try and deduce the total behavior of an organism.

Since bones were all the paleontologists had, bones were what they used. Like other paleontologists, Grant had become very expert at working with bones. And somewhere along the way, he had started to forget the unprovable possibilities—that the dinosaurs might be truly different animals, that they might possess behavior and social life organized along lines that were utterly mysterious to their later, mammalian descendants. That, since the dinosaurs were fundamentally birds—

“Oh, my God,” Grant said.

He stared at the raptors, ranged along the beach in a rigid formation, silently watching the boat. And he suddenly understood what he was looking at.

“Those animals,” Gennaro said, shaking his head, “they sure are desperate to escape from here.”

“No,” Grant said. “They don’t want to escape at all.”

“They don’t?”

“No,” Grant said. “They want to migrate.”

APPROACHING DARK

“Migrating!” Ellie said. “That’s fantastic!”

“Yes,” Grant said. He was grinning.

Ellie said, “Where do you suppose they want to go?”

“I don’t know,” Grant said, and then the big helicopters burst through the fog, thundering and wheeling over the landscape, their underbellies heavy with armament. The raptors scattered in alarm as one of the helicopters circled back, following the line of the surf, and then moved in to land on the beach. A door was flung open and soldiers in olive uniforms came running toward them. Grant heard the rapid babble of voices in Spanish and saw that Muldoon was already aboard with the kids. One of the soldiers said in English, “Please, you will come with us. Please, there is no time here.”

Grant looked back at the beach where the raptors had been, but they were gone. All the animals had vanished. It was as if they had never existed. The soldiers were tugging at him, and he allowed himself to be led beneath the thumping blades and climbed up through the big door. Muldoon leaned over and shouted in Grant’s ear, “They want us out of here now. They’re going to do it now!”

The soldiers pushed Grant and Ellie and Gennaro into seats, and helped them clip on the harnesses. Tim and Lex waved to him and he suddenly saw how young they were, and how exhausted. Lex was yawning, leaning against her brother’s shoulder.

An officer came toward Grant and shouted, “Senor: are you in charge?”

“No,” Grant said. “I’m not in charge.”

“Who is in charge, please?”

“I don’t know.”

The officer went on to Gennaro, and asked the same question: “Are you in charge?”

“No,” Gennaro said.

The officer looked at Ellie, but said nothing to her. The door was left open as the helicopter lifted away from the beach, and Grant leaned out to see if he could catch a last look at the raptors, but then the helicopter was above the palm trees, moving north over the island.

Grant leaned to Muldoon, and shouted: “What about the others?”

Muldoon shouted, “They’ve already taken off Harding and some workmen. Hammond had an accident. Found him on the hill near his bungalow. Must have fallen.”

“Is he all right?” Grant said.

“No. Compys got him.”

“What about Malcolm?” Grant said.

Muldoon shook his head.

Grant was too tired to feel much of anything. He turned away, and looked back out the door. It was getting dark now, and in the fading light he could barely see the little rex, with bloody jaws, crouched over a hadrosaur by the edge of the lagoon and looking up at the helicopter and roaring as it passed by.

Somewhere behind them they heard explosions, and then ahead they saw another helicopter wheeling through the mist over the visitor center, and a moment later the building burst in a bright orange fireball, and Lex began to cry, and Ellie put her arm around her and tried to get her not to look.

Grant was staring down at the ground, and he had a last glimpse of the hypsilophodonts, leaping gracefully as gazelles, moments before another explosion flared bright beneath them. Their helicopter gained altitude, and then moved east, out over the ocean.

Grant sat back in his seat. He thought of the dinosaurs standing on the beach, and he wondered where they would migrate if they could, and he realized he would never know, and he felt sad and relieved in the same moment.

The officer came forward again, bending close to his face. “Are you in charge?”

“No,” Grant said.

“Please, señor, who is in charge?”

“Nobody,” Grant said.

The helicopter gained speed as it headed toward the mainland. It was cold now, and the soldiers muscled the door closed. As they did, Grant looked back just once, and saw the island against a deep purple sky and sea, cloaked in a deep mist that blurred the white-hot explosions that burst rapidly, one after another, until it seemed the entire island was glowing, a diminishing bright spot in the darkening night.

EPILOGUE: SAN JOSÉ

Days went by. The government was polite, and put them up in a nice hotel in San José. They were free to come and go, and to call whomever they wished. But they were not permitted to leave the country. Each day a young man from the American Embassy came to visit them, to ask if they needed anything, and to explain that Washington was doing everything it could to hasten their departure. But the plain fact was that many people had died in a territorial possession of Costa Rica. The plain fact was that an ecological disaster had been narrowly averted. The government of Costa Rica felt it had been misled and deceived by John Hammond and his plans for the island. Under the circumstances, the government was not disposed to release survivors in a hurry. They did not even permit the burial of Hammond or Ian Malcolm. They simply waited.

Each day it seemed to Grant he was taken to another government office, where he was questioned by another courteous, intelligent government officer. They made him go over his story, again and again. How Grant had met John Hammond. What Grant knew of the project. How Grant had received the fax from New York. Why Grant had gone to the island. What had happened at the island.

The same details, again and again, day after day. The same story.

For a long time, Grant thought they must believe he was lying to them, and that there was something they wanted him to tell, although he could not imagine what it was. Yet, in some odd way, they seemed to be waiting.

Finally, he was sitting around the swimming pool of the hotel one afternoon, watching Tim and Lex splash, when an American in khakis walked up.

“We’ve never met,” the American said. “My name is Marty Guitierrez. I’m a researcher here, at the Carara station.”

Grant said, “You were the one who found the original specimen of the Procompsognathus.”

“That’s right, yes.” Guitierrez sat next to him. “You must be eager to go home.”

“Yes,” Grant said. “I have only a few days left to dig before the winter sets in. In Montana, you know, the first snow usually comes in August.”

Guitierrez said, “Is that why the Hammond Foundation supported northern digs? Because intact genetic material from dinosaurs was more likely to be recovered from cold climates?”

“That’s what I presume, yes.”

Guitierrez nodded. “He was a clever man, Mr. Hammond.”

Grant said nothing. Guitierrez sat back in the pool chair.

“The authorities won’t tell you,” Guitierrez said finally. “Because they are afraid, and perhaps also resentful of you, for what you have done. But something very peculiar is happening in the rural regions.”

“Biting the babies?”

“No, thankfully, that has stopped. But something else. This spring, in the Ismaloya section, which is to the north, some unknown animals ate the crops in a very peculiar manner. They moved each day, in a straight line—almost as straight as an arrow—from the coast, into the mountains, into the jungle.”

Grant sat upright.

“Like a migration,” Guitierrez said. “Wouldn’t you say?”

“What crops?” Grant said.

“Well, it was odd. They would only eat agama beans and soy, and sometimes chickens.”

Grant said, “Foods rich in lysine. What happened to these animals?”

“Presumably,” Guitierrez said, “they entered the jungles. In any case, they have not been found. Of course, it would be difficult to search for them in the jungle. A search party could spend years in the Ismaloya mountains, with nothing to show for it.”

“And we are being kept here because …”

Guitierrez shrugged. “The government is worried. Perhaps there are more animals. More trouble. They are feeling cautious.”

“Do you think there are more animals?” Grant said.

“I can’t say. Can you?”

“No,” Grant said. “I can’t say.”

“But you suspect?”

Grant nodded. “Possibly there are. Yes.”

“I agree.”

Guitierrez pushed up from his chair. He waved to Tim and Lex, playing in the pool. “Probably they will send the children home,” he said. “There is no reason not to do that.” He put on his sunglasses. “Enjoy your stay with us, Dr. Grant. It is a lovely country here.”

Grant said, “You’re telling me we’re not going anywhere?”

“None of us is going anywhere, Dr. Grant,” Guitierrez said, smiling. And then he turned, and walked back toward the entrance of the hotel.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In preparing this novel, I have drawn on the work of many eminent paleontologists, particularly Robert Bakker, John Horner, John Ostrom, and Gregory Paul. I have also made use of the efforts of the new generation of illustrators, including Kenneth Carpenter, Margaret Colbert, Stephen and Sylvia Czerkas, John Gurche, Mark Hallett, Douglas Henderson, and William Stout, whose reconstructions incorporate the new perception of how dinosaurs behaved.

Certain ideas presented here about paleo-DNA, the genetic material of extinct animals, were first articulated by Charles Pellegrino, based on the research by George O. Poinar, Jr., and Roberta Hess, who formed the Extinct DNA Study Group at Berkeley. Some discussions of chaos theory derive in part from the commentaries of Ivar Ekeland and James Gleick. The computer programs of Bob Gross inspired some of the graphics. The work of the late Heinz Pagels provoked Ian Malcolm.

However, this book is entirely fiction, and the views expressed here are my own, as are whatever factual errors exist in the text.

Books by Michael Crichton

The Andromeda Strain

The Terminal Man

The Great Train Robbery

Eaters of the Dead

Congo

Sphere

Travels

Jurassic Park

Rising Sun

The Lost World

Disclosure

Airframe

Timeline

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.

The Lost World: A Novel

Front Matter

Title Page

Praise for the book

“SOLID ENTERTAINMENT …

Crichton is one helluva yarn-spinner.”

—Copley News Service

“It made my palms sweat … For clarity, terror, and sheer grisliness, the action far surpasses anything in the original book; even better, the suspense is masterfully stretched out, then released all of a sudden—just when you least expect it.”

—Entertainment Weekly

“The Lost World is a page-turner, just as much kinetic fun as Jurassic Park.”

—Buffalo News

“Just as absorbing as its predecessor … Fast-paced and suspenseful … If you were hooked by Jurassic Park, you’ll be reeled in by this new adventure. It’s a compelling and thoroughly enjoyable read.”

—The Free Press (Chattanooga)

“Another immensely entertaining adventure … The admirable Crichton keeps the pot boiling throughout.”

—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Publisher Details

A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group

1995 by Michael Crichton
Map 1995 by David Cain
Dinosaur illustrations 1995 by Gregory Wenzel

BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-375-41220-2

Computer graphics by David Nakabayashi

This edition published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

www.ballantinebooks.com

v3.1_r4

Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Map
Epigraph
Introduction: “Extinction at the K-T Boundary”
Prologue: “Life at the Edge of Chaos”
First Configuration
Aberrant Forms
San José
Departure
Palo Alto
Berkeley
The Lost World
School
Tag
Thorne
Second Configuration
Clues
Raptor
The Five Deaths
James
Field Systems
Harding
Message
Exploitation
Third Configuration
Costa Rica
Isla Sorna
The Stream
The Road
Site B
Trailer
Interior
Arby
Laboratory
Power
Nest
Fourth Configuration
Levine
Dodgson
The High Hide
The Red Queen
Puerto Cortés
King
Harding
The Valley
Cave
Dodgson
Mating Calls
Problems of Evolution
Parasaurs
Heat
Noise
Trail
Nest
The High Hide
Trailer
Nest
Dodgson
Decision
Nest
Gambler’s Ruin
King
Bad News
Fifth Configuration
Baby
The High Hide
The Herd
Dodgson
Trailer
Thorne
Trailer
The High Hide
Malcolm
The High Hide
Sixth Configuration
Chase
At the Edge of Chaos
Trailer
Village
Good Mother
Dodgson
Explorer
Daylight
A Way Out
Escape
Exit
Seventh Configuration
Departure
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Books by Michael Crichton
About the Author

Epigraphs

“What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world.”

ALBERT EINSTEIN

“Deep in the chaotic regime, slight changes in structure almost always cause vast changes in behavior. Complex controllable behavior seems precluded.”

STUART KAUFFMAN

“Sequelae are inherently unpredictable.”

IAN MALCOLM

Map

Introduction: “Extinction at the K-T Boundary”

The late twentieth century has witnessed a remarkable growth in scientific interest in the subject of extinction.

It is hardly a new subject—Baron Georges Cuvier had first demonstrated that species became extinct back in 1786, not long after the American Revolution. Thus the fact of extinction had been accepted by scientists for nearly three-quarters of a century before Darwin put forth his theory of evolution. And after Darwin, the many controversies that swirled around his theory did not often concern issues of extinction.

On the contrary, extinction was generally considered as unremarkable as a car running out of gas. Extinction was simply proof of failure to adapt. How species adapted was intensely studied and fiercely debated. But the fact that some species failed was hardly given a second thought. What was there to say about it? However, beginning in the 1970s, two developments began to focus attention on extinction in a new way.

The first was the recognition that human beings were now very numerous, and were altering the planet at a very rapid rate—eliminating traditional habitats, clearing the rain forest, polluting air and water, perhaps even changing global climate. In the process, many animal species were becoming extinct. Some scientists cried out in alarm; others were quietly uneasy. How fragile was the earth’s ecosystem? Was the human species engaged in behavior that would eventually lead to its own extinction?

No one was sure. Since nobody had ever bothered to study extinction in an organized way, there was little information about rates of extinction in other geological eras. So scientists began to look closely at extinction in the past, hoping to answer anxieties about the present.

The second development concerned new knowledge about the death of the dinosaurs. It had long been known that all dinosaur species had become extinct in a relatively short time at the end of the Cretaceous era, approximately sixty-five million years ago. Exactly how quickly those extinctions occurred was a subject of long-standing debate: some paleontologists believed they had been catastrophically swift, others felt the dinosaurs had died out more gradually, over a period of ten thousand to ten million years—hardly a rapid event.

Then, in 1980, physicist Luis Alvarez and three coworkers discovered high concentrations of the element iridium in rocks from the end of the Cretaceous and the start of the Tertiary—the so-called K-T boundary. (The Cretaceous was shorthanded as “K” to avoid confusion with the Cambrian and other geological periods.) Iridium is rare on earth, but abundant in meteors. Alvarez’s team argued that the presence of so much iridium in rocks at the K-T boundary suggested that a giant meteorite, many miles in diameter, had collided with the earth at that time. They theorized that the resulting dust and debris had darkened the skies, inhibited photosynthesis, killed plants and animals, and ended the reign of the dinosaurs.

This dramatic theory captured the media and public imagination. It began a controversy which continued for many years. Where was the crater from this meteor? Various candidates were proposed. There were five major periods of extinction in the past—had meteors caused them all? Was there a twenty-six-million-year cycle of catastrophe? Was the planet even now awaiting another devastating impact?

After more than a decade, these questions remained unanswered. The debate raged on—until August 1993, when, at a weekly seminar of the Santa Fe Institute, an iconoclastic mathematician named Ian Malcolm announced that none of these questions mattered, and that the debate over a meteoric impact was “a frivolous and irrelevant speculation.”

“Consider the numbers,” Malcolm said, leaning on the podium, staring forward at his audience. “On our planet there are currently fifty million species of plants and animals. We think that is a remarkable diversity, yet it is nothing compared to what has existed before. We estimate that there have been fifty billion species on this planet since life began. That means that for every thousand species that ever existed on the planet, only one remains today. Thus 99.9 percent of all species that ever lived are extinct. And mass killings account for only five percent of that total. The overwhelming majority of species died one at a time.”

The truth, Malcolm said, was that life on earth was marked by a continuous, steady rate of extinction. By and large, the average lifespan of a species was four million years. For mammals, it was a million years. Then the species vanished. So the real pattern was one of species rising, flourishing, and dying out in a few million years. On average, one species a day had become extinct throughout the history of life on the earth.

“But why?” he asked. “What leads to the rise and decline of earth’s species in a four-million-year life cycle?

“One answer is that we do not recognize how continuously active our planet is. Just in the last fifty thousand years—a geological blink of an eye—the rain forests have severely contracted, then expanded again. Rain forests aren’t an ageless feature of the planet; they’re actually rather new. As recently as ten thousand years ago, when there were human hunters on the American continent, an ice pack extended as far down as New York City. Many animals became extinct during that time.

“So most of earth’s history shows animals living and dying against a very active background. That probably explains 90 percent of extinctions. If the seas dry up, or become more salty, then of course ocean plankton will all die. But complex animals like dinosaurs are another matter, because complex animals have insulated themselves—literally and figuratively—against such changes. Why do complex animals die out? Why don’t they adjust? Physically, they seem to have the capacity to survive. There appears to be no reason why they should die. And yet they do.

“What I wish to propose is that complex animals become extinct not because of a change in their physical adaptation to their environment, but because of their behavior. I would suggest that the latest thinking in chaos theory, or nonlinear dynamics, provides tantalizing hints to how this happens.

“It suggests to us that behavior of complex animals can change very rapidly, and not always for the better. It suggests that behavior can cease to be responsive to the environment, and lead to decline and death. It suggests that animals may stop adapting. Is this what happened to the dinosaurs? Is this the true cause of their disappearance? We may never know. But it is no accident that human beings are so interested in dinosaur extinction. The decline of the dinosaurs allowed mammals—including us—to flourish. And that leads us to wonder whether the disappearance of the dinosaurs is going to be repeated, sooner or later, by us as well. Whether at the deepest level the fault lies not in blind fate—in some fiery meteor from the skies—but in our own behavior. At the moment, we have no answer.”

And then he smiled.

“But I have a few suggestions,” he said.

Prologue:
“Life at the Edge of Chaos”

The Santa Fe Institute was housed in a series of buildings on Canyon Road which had formerly been a convent, and the Institute’s seminars were held in a room which had served as a chapel. Now, standing at the podium, with a shaft of sunlight shining down on him, Ian Malcolm paused dramatically before continuing his lecture.

Malcolm was forty years old, and a familiar figure at the Institute. He had been one of the early pioneers in chaos theory, but his promising career had been disrupted by a severe injury during a trip to Costa Rica; Malcolm had, in fact, been reported dead in several newscasts. “I was sorry to cut short the celebrations in mathematics departments around the country,” he later said, “but it turned out I was only slightly dead. The surgeons have done wonders, as they will be the first to tell you. So now I am back—in my next iteration, you might say.”

Dressed entirely in black, leaning on a cane, Malcolm gave the impression of severity. He was known within the Institute for his unconventional analysis, and his tendency to pessimism. His talk that August, entitled “Life at the Edge of Chaos,” was typical of his thinking. In it, Malcolm presented his analysis of chaos theory as it applied to evolution.

He could not have wished for a more knowledgeable audience. The Santa Fe Institute had been formed in the mid-1980s by a group of scientists interested in the implications of chaos theory. The scientists came from many fields—physics, economics, biology, computer science. What they had in common was a belief that the complexity of the world concealed an underlying order which had previously eluded science, and which would be revealed by chaos theory, now known as complexity theory. In the words of one, complexity theory was “the science of the twenty-first century.”

The Institute had explored the behavior of a great variety of complex systems—corporations in the marketplace, neurons in the human brain, enzyme cascades within a single cell, the group behavior of migratory birds—systems so complex that it had not been possible to study them before the advent of the computer. The research was new, and the findings were surprising.

It did not take long before the scientists began to notice that complex systems showed certain common behaviors. They started to think of these behaviors as characteristic of all complex systems. They realized that these behaviors could not be explained by analyzing the components of the systems. The time-honored scientific approach of reductionism—taking the watch apart to see how it worked—didn’t get you anywhere with complex systems, because the interesting behavior seemed to arise from the spontaneous interaction of the components. The behavior wasn’t planned or directed; it just happened. Such behavior was therefore called “self-organizing.”

“Of the self-organizing behaviors,” Ian Malcolm said, “two are of particular interest to the study of evolution. One is adaptation. We see it everywhere. Corporations adapt to the marketplace, brain cells adapt to signal traffic, the immune system adapts to infection, animals adapt to their food supply. We have come to think that the ability to adapt is characteristic of complex systems—and may be one reason why evolution seems to lead toward more complex organisms.”

He shifted at the podium, transferring his weight onto his cane. “But even more important,” he said, “is the way complex systems seem to strike a balance between the need for order and the imperative to change. Complex systems tend to locate themselves at a place we call ‘the edge of chaos.’ We imagine the edge of chaos as a place where there is enough innovation to keep a living system vibrant, and enough stability to keep it from collapsing into anarchy. It is a zone of conflict and upheaval, where the old and the new are constantly at war. Finding the balance point must be a delicate matter—if a living system drifts too close, it risks falling over into incoherence and dissolution; but if the system moves too far away from the edge, it becomes rigid, frozen, totalitarian. Both conditions lead to extinction. Too much change is as destructive as too little. Only at the edge of chaos can complex systems flourish.”

He paused. “And, by implication, extinction is the inevitable result of one or the other strategy—too much change, or too little.”

In the audience, heads were nodding. This was familiar thinking to most of the researchers present. Indeed, the concept of the edge of chaos was very nearly dogma at the Santa Fe Institute.

“Unfortunately,” Malcolm continued, “the gap between this theoretical construct and the fact of extinction is vast. We have no way to know if our thinking is correct. The fossil record can tell us that an animal became extinct at a certain time, but not why. Computer simulations are of limited value. Nor can we perform experiments on living organisms. Thus, we are obliged to admit that extinction—untestable, unsuited for experiment—may not be a scientific subject at all. And this may explain why the subject has been embroiled in the most intense religious and political controversy. I would remind you that there is no religious debate about Avogadro’s number, or Planck’s constant, or the functions of the pancreas. But about extinction, there has been perpetual controversy for two hundred years. And I wonder how it is to be solved if—Yes? What is it?”

At the back of the room, a hand had gone up, waving impatiently. Malcolm frowned, visibly annoyed. The tradition at the Institute was that questions were held until the presentation ended; it was poor form to interrupt a speaker. “You had a question?” Malcolm asked.

From the back of the room, a young man in his early thirties stood. “Actually,” the man said, “an observation.”

The speaker was dark and thin, dressed in khaki shirt and shorts, precise in his movements and manner. Malcolm recognized him as a paleontologist from Berkeley named Levine, who was spending the summer at the Institute. Malcolm had never spoken to him, but he knew his reputation: Levine was generally agreed to be the best paleobiologist of his generation, perhaps the best in the world. But most people at the Institute disliked him, finding him pompous and arrogant.

“I agree,” Levine continued, “that the fossil record is not helpful in addressing extinction. Particularly if your thesis is that behavior is the cause of extinction—because bones don’t tell us as much about behavior. But I disagree that your behavioral thesis is untestable. In point of fact, it implies an outcome. Although perhaps you haven’t yet thought of it.”

The room was silent. At the podium, Malcolm frowned. The eminent mathematician was not accustomed to being told he had not thought through his ideas. “What’s your point,” he said.

Levine appeared indifferent to the tension in the room. “Just this,” he said. “During the Cretaceous, Dinosauria were widely distributed across the planet. We have found their remains on every continent, and in every climatic zone—even in the Antarctic. Now. If their extinction was really the result of their behavior, and not the consequence of a catastrophe, or a disease, or a change in plant life, or any of the other broad-scale explanations that have been proposed, then it seems to me highly unlikely that they all changed their behavior at the same time, everywhere. And that in turn means that there may well be some remnants of these animals still alive on the earth. Why couldn’t you look for them?”

“You could,” Malcolm said coldly, “if that amused you. And if you had no more compelling use for your time.”

“No, no,” Levine said earnestly. “I’m quite serious. What if the dinosaurs did not become extinct? What if they still exist? Somewhere in an isolated spot on the planet.”

“You’re talking about a Lost World,” Malcolm said, and heads in the room nodded knowingly. Scientists at the Institute had developed a shorthand for referring to common evolutionary scenarios. They spoke of the Field of Bullets, the Gambler’s Ruin, the Game of Life, the Lost World, the Red Queen, and Black Noise. These were well-defined ways of thinking about evolution. But they were all—

“No,” Levine said stubbornly. “I am speaking literally.”

“Then you’re badly deluded,” Malcolm said, with a dismissive wave of his hand. He turned away from the audience, and walked slowly to the blackboard. “Now, if we consider the implications of the edge of chaos, we may begin by asking ourselves, what is the minimal unit of life? Most contemporary definitions of life would include the presence of DNA, but there are two examples which suggest to us that this definition is too narrow. If you consider viruses and so-called prions, it is clear that life may in fact exist without DNA.…”

At the back of the room, Levine stared for a moment. Then, reluctantly, he sat down, and began to make notes.

The Lost World Hypothesis

The lecture ended, Malcolm hobbled across the open courtyard of the Institute, shortly after noon. Walking beside him was Sarah Harding, a young field biologist visiting from Africa. Malcolm had known her for several years, since he had been asked to serve as an outside reader for her doctoral thesis at Berkeley.

Crossing the courtyard in the hot summer sun, they made an unlikely pair: Malcolm dressed in black, stooped and ascetic, leaning on his cane; Harding compact and muscular, looking young and energetic in shorts and a tee shirt, her short black hair pushed up on her forehead with sunglasses. Her field of study was African predators, lions and hyenas. She was scheduled to return to Nairobi the next day.

The two had been close since Malcolm’s surgery. Harding had been on a sabbatical year in Austin, and had helped nurse Malcolm back to health, after his many operations. For a while it seemed as if a romance had blossomed, and that Malcolm, a confirmed bachelor, would settle down. But then Harding had gone back to Africa, and Malcolm had gone to Santa Fe. Whatever their former relationship had been, they were now just friends.

They discussed the questions that had come at the end of his lecture. From Malcolm’s point of view, there had been only the predictable objections: that mass extinctions were important; that human beings owed their existence to the Cretaceous extinction, which had wiped out the dinosaurs and allowed the mammals to take over. As one questioner had pompously phrased it, “The Cretaceous allowed our own sentient awareness to arise on the planet.”

Malcolm’s reply was immediate: “What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There’s no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told—and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their ‘beliefs.’ The reason is that beliefs guide behavior, which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion. Next question.”

Now, walking across the courtyard, Sarah Harding laughed. “They didn’t care for that.”

“I admit it’s discouraging,” he said. “But it can’t be helped.” He shook his head. “These are some of the best scientists in the country, and still … no interesting ideas. By the way, what’s the story on that guy who interrupted me?”

“Richard Levine?” She laughed. “Irritating, isn’t he? He has a worldwide reputation for being a pain in the ass.”

Malcolm grunted. “I’d say.”

“He’s wealthy, is the problem,” Harding said. “You know about the Becky dolls?”

“No,” Malcolm said, giving her a glance.

“Well, every little girl in America does. There’s a series: Becky and Sally and Frances, and several more. They’re Americana dolls. Levine is the heir of the company. So he’s a smartass rich kid. Impetuous, does whatever he wants.”

Malcolm nodded. “You have time for lunch?”

“Sure, I would be—”

“Dr. Malcolm! Wait up! Please! Dr. Malcolm!”

Malcolm turned. Hurrying across the courtyard toward them was the gangling figure of Richard Levine.

“Ah, shit,” Malcolm said.

“Dr. Malcolm,” Levine said, coming up. “I was surprised that you didn’t take my proposal more seriously.”

“How could I?” Malcolm said. “It’s absurd.”

“Yes, but—”

“Ms. Harding and I were just going to lunch,” Malcolm said, gesturing to Sarah.

“Yes, but I think you should reconsider,” Levine said, pressing on. “Because I believe my argument is valid—it is entirely possible, even likely, that dinosaurs still exist. You must know there are persistent rumors about animals in Costa Rica, where I believe you have spent time.”

“Yes, and in the case of Costa Rica I can tell you—”

“Also in the Congo,” Levine said, continuing. “For years there have been reports by pygmies of a large sauropod, perhaps even an apatosaur, in the dense forest around Bokambu. And also in the high jungles of Irian Jaya, there is supposedly an animal the size of a rhino, which perhaps is a remnant ceratopsian—”

“Fantasy,” Malcolm said. “Pure fantasy. Nothing has ever been seen. No photographs. No hard evidence.”

“Perhaps not,” Levine said. “But absence of proof is not proof of absence. I believe there may well be a locus of these animals, survivals from a past time.”

Malcolm shrugged. “Anything is possible,” he said.

“But in point of fact, survival is possible,” Levine insisted. “I keep getting calls about new animals in Costa Rica. Remnants, fragments.”

Malcolm paused. “Recently?”

“Not for a while.”

“Umm,” Malcolm said. “I thought so.”

“The last call was nine months ago,” Levine said. “I was in Siberia looking at that frozen baby mammoth, and I couldn’t get back in time. But I’m told it was some kind of very large, atypical lizard, found dead in the jungle of Costa Rica.”

“And? What happened to it?”

“The remains were burned.”

“So nothing is left?”

“That’s right.”

“No photographs? No proof?”

“Apparently not.”

“So it’s just a story,” Malcolm said.

“Perhaps. But I believe it is worth mounting an expedition, to find out about these reported survivals.”

Malcolm stared at him. “An expedition? To find a hypothetical Lost World? Who is going to pay for it?”

“I am,” Levine said. “I have already begun the preliminary planning.”

“But that could cost—”

“I don’t care what it costs,” Levine said. “The fact is, survival is possible, it has occurred in a variety of species from other genera, and it may be that there are survivals from the Cretaceous as well.”

“Fantasy,” Malcolm said again, shaking his head.

Levine paused, and stared at Malcolm. “Dr. Malcolm,” he said, “I must say I’m very surprised at your attitude. You’ve just presented a thesis and I am offering you a chance to prove it. I would have thought you’d jump at the opportunity.”

“My jumping days are over,” Malcolm said.

“But instead of taking me up on this, you—”

“I’m not interested in dinosaurs,” Malcolm said.

“But everyone is interested in dinosaurs.”

“Not me.” He turned on his cane, and started to walk off.

“By the way,” Levine said. “What were you doing in Costa Rica? I heard you were there for almost a year.”

“I was lying in a hospital bed. They couldn’t move me out of intensive care for six months. I couldn’t even get on a plane.”

“Yes,” Levine said. “I know you got hurt. But what were you doing there in the first place? Weren’t you looking for dinosaurs?”

Malcolm squinted at him in the bright sun, and leaned on his cane. “No,” he said. “I wasn’t.”

They were all three sitting at a small painted table in the corner of the Guadalupe Cafe, on the other side of the river. Sarah Harding drank Corona from the bottle, and watched the two men opposite her. Levine looked pleased to be with them, as if he had won some victory to be sitting at the table. Malcolm looked weary, like a parent who has spent too much time with a hyperactive child.

“You want to know what I’ve heard?” Levine said. “I’ve heard that a couple of years back, a company named InGen genetically engineered some dinosaurs and put them on an island in Costa Rica. But something went wrong, a lot of people were killed, and the dinosaurs were destroyed. And now nobody will talk about it, because of some legal angle. Nondisclosure agreements or something. And the Costa Rican government doesn’t want to hurt tourism. So nobody will talk. That’s what I’ve heard.”

Malcolm stared at him. “And you believe that?”

“Not at first, I didn’t,” Levine said. “But the thing is, I keep hearing it. The rumors keep floating around. Supposedly you, and Alan Grant, and a bunch of other people were there.”

“Did you ask Grant about it?”

“I asked him, last year, at a conference in Peking. He said it was absurd.”

Malcolm nodded slowly.

“Is that what you say?” Levine asked, drinking his beer. “I mean, you know Grant, don’t you?”

“No. I never met him.”

Levine was watching Malcolm closely. “So it’s not true?”

Malcolm sighed. “Are you familiar with the concept of a techno-myth? It was developed by Geller at Princeton. Basic thesis is that we’ve lost all the old myths, Orpheus and Eurydice and Perseus and Medusa. So we fill the gap with modern techno-myths. Geller listed a dozen or so. One is that an alien’s living at a hangar at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Another is that somebody invented a carburetor that gets a hundred and fifty miles to the gallon, but the automobile companies bought the patent and are sitting on it. Then there’s the story that the Russians trained children in ESP at a secret base in Siberia and these kids can kill people anywhere in the world with their thoughts. The story that the lines in Nazca, Peru, are an alien spaceport. That the CIA released the AIDS virus to kill homosexuals. That Nikola Tesla discovered an incredible energy source but his notes are lost. That in Istanbul there’s a tenth-century drawing that shows the earth from space. That the Stanford Research Institute found a guy whose body glows in the dark. Get the picture?”

“You’re saying InGen’s dinosaurs are a myth,” Levine said.

“Of course they are. They have to be. Do you think it’s possible to genetically engineer a dinosaur?”

“The experts all tell me it’s not.”

“And they’re right,” Malcolm said. He glanced at Harding, as if for confirmation. She said nothing, just drank her beer.

In fact, Harding knew something more about these dinosaur rumors. Once after surgery, Malcolm had been delirious, mumbling nonsense from the anaesthesia and pain medication. And he had been seemingly fearful, twisting in the bed, repeating the names of several kinds of dinosaurs. Harding had asked the nurse about it; she said he was like that after every operation. The hospital staff assumed it was a drug-induced fantasy—yet it seemed to Harding that Malcolm was reliving some terrifying actual experience. The feeling was heightened by the slangy, familiar way Malcolm referred to the dinosaurs: he called them “raptors” and “compys” and “trikes.” And he seemed especially fearful of the raptors.

Later, when he was back home, she had asked him about his delirium. He had just shrugged it off, making a bad joke—“At least I didn’t mention other women, did I?” And then he made some comment about having been a dinosaur nut as a kid, and how illness made you regress. His whole attitude was elaborately indifferent, as if it were all unimportant; she had the distinct feeling he was being evasive. But she wasn’t inclined to push it; those were the days when she was in love with him, her attitude indulgent.

Now he was looking at her in a questioning way, as if to ask if she was going to contradict him. Harding just raised an eyebrow, and stared back. He must have his reasons. She could wait him out.

Levine leaned forward across the table toward Malcolm and said, “So the InGen story is entirely untrue?”

“Entirely untrue,” Malcolm said, nodding gravely. “Entirely untrue.”

Malcolm had been denying the speculation for three years. By now he was getting good at it; his weariness was no longer affected but genuine. In fact, he had been a consultant to International Genetic Technologies of Palo Alto in the summer of 1989, and he had made a trip to Costa Rica for them, which had turned out disastrously. In the aftermath, everyone involved had moved quickly to quash the story. InGen wanted to limit its liability. The Costa Rican government wanted to preserve its reputation as a tourist paradise. And the individual scientists had been bound by nondisclosure agreements, abetted later by generous grants to continue their silence. In Malcolm’s case, two years of medical bills had been paid by the company.

Meanwhile, InGen’s island facility in Costa Rica had been destroyed. There were no longer any living creatures on the island. The company had hired the eminent Stanford professor George Baselton, a biologist and essayist whose frequent television appearances had made him a popular authority on scientific subjects. Baselton claimed to have visited the island, and had been tireless in denying rumors that extinct animals had ever existed there. His derisive snort, “Saber-toothed tigers, indeed!” was particularly effective.

As time passed, interest in the story waned. InGen was long since bankrupt; the principal investors in Europe and Asia had taken their losses. Although the company’s physical assets, the buildings and lab equipment, would be sold piecemeal, the core technology that had been developed would, they decided, never be sold. In short, the InGen chapter was closed.

There was nothing more to say.

“So there’s no truth to it,” Levine said, biting into his green-corn tamale. “To tell you the truth, Dr. Malcolm, that makes me feel better.”

“Why?” Malcolm said.

“Because it means that the remnants that keep turning up in Costa Rica must be real. Real dinosaurs. I’ve got a friend from Yale down there, a field biologist, and he says he’s seen them. I believe him.”

Malcolm shrugged. “I doubt,” he said, “that any more animals will turn up in Costa Rica.”

“It’s true there haven’t been any for almost a year now. But if more show up, I’m going down there. And in the interim, I am going to outfit an expedition. I’ve been giving a lot of thought to how it should be done. I think the special vehicles could be built and ready in a year. I’ve already talked to Doc Thorne about it. Then I’ll assemble a team, perhaps including Dr. Harding here, or a similarly accomplished naturalist, and some graduate students.…”

Malcolm listened, shaking his head.

“You think I’m wasting my time,” Levine said.

“I do, yes.”

“But suppose—just suppose—that animals start to show up again.”

“Never happen.”

“But suppose they did?” Levine said. “Would you be interested in helping me? To plan an expedition?”

Malcolm finished his meal, and pushed the plate aside. He stared at Levine.

“Yes,” he said finally. “If animals started showing up again, I would be interested in helping you.”

“Great!” Levine said. “That’s all I wanted to know.”

Outside, in the bright sunlight on Guadalupe Street, Malcolm walked with Sarah toward Malcolm’s battered Ford sedan. Levine climbed into a bright-red Ferrari, waved cheerfully, and roared off.

“You think it will ever happen?” Sarah Harding said. “That these, ah, animals will start showing up again?”

“No,” Malcolm said. “I am quite sure they never will.”

“You sound hopeful.”

He shook his head, and got awkwardly in the car, swinging his bad leg under the steering wheel. Harding climbed in beside him. He glanced at her, and turned the key in the ignition. They drove back to the Institute.

The following day, she went back to Africa. During the next eighteen months, she had a rough sense of Levine’s progress, since from time to time he called her with some question about field protocols, or vehicle tires, or the best anaesthetic to use on animals in the wild. Sometimes she got a call from Doc Thorne, who was building the vehicles. He usually sounded harassed.

From Malcolm she heard nothing at all, although he sent her a card on her birthday. It arrived a month late. He had scrawled at the bottom, “Have a happy birthday. Be glad you’re nowhere near him. He’s driving me crazy.”

FIRST CONFIGURATION

“In the conservative region far from the chaotic edge, individual elements coalesce slowly, showing no clear pattern.”

IAN MALCOLM

Aberrant Forms

In the fading afternoon light, the helicopter skimmed low along the coast, following the line where the dense jungle met the beach. The last of the fishing villages had flashed by beneath them ten minutes ago. Now there was only impenetrable Costa Rican jungle, mangrove swamps, and mile after mile of deserted sand. Sitting beside the pilot, Marty Guitierrez stared out the window as the coastline swept past. There weren’t even any roads in this area, at least none that Guitierrez could see.

Guitierrez was a quiet, bearded American of thirty-six, a field biologist who had lived for the last eight years in Costa Rica. He had originally come to study toucan speciation in the rain forest, but stayed on as a consultant to the Reserva Biológica de Carara, the national park in the north. He clicked the radio mike and said to the pilot, “How much farther?”

“Five minutes, Señor Guitierrez.”

Guitierrez turned and said, “It won’t be long now.” But the tall man folded up in the back seat of the helicopter didn’t answer, or even acknowledge that he had been spoken to. He merely sat, with his hand on his chin, and stared frowning out the window.

Richard Levine wore sun-faded field khakis, and an Australian slouch hat pushed low over his head. A battered pair of binoculars hung around his neck. But despite his rugged appearance, Levine conveyed an air of scholarly absorption. Behind his wire-frame spectacles, his features were sharp, his expression intense and critical as he looked out the window.

“What is this place?”

“It’s called Rojas.”

“So we’re far south?”

“Yes. Only about fifty miles from the border with Panama.”

Levine stared at the jungle. “I don’t see any roads,” he said. “How was the thing found?”

“Couple of campers,” Guitierrez said. “They came in by boat, landed on the beach.”

“When was that?”

“Yesterday. They took one look at the thing, and ran like hell.”

Levine nodded. With his long limbs folded up, his hands tucked under his chin, he looked like a praying mantis. That had been his nickname in graduate school: in part because of his appearance—and in part because of his tendency to bite off the head of anyone who disagreed with him.

Guitierrez said, “Been to Costa Rica before?”

“No. First time,” Levine said. And then he gave an irritable wave of his hand, as if he didn’t want to be bothered with small talk.

Guitierrez smiled. After all these years, Levine had not changed at all. He was still one of the most brilliant and irritating men in science. The two had been fellow graduate students at Yale, until Levine quit the doctoral program to get his degree in comparative zoology instead. Levine announced he had no interest in the kind of contemporary field research that so attracted Guitierrez. With characteristic contempt, he had once described Guitierrez’s work as “collecting parrot crap from around the world.”

The truth was that Levine—brilliant and fastidious—was drawn to the past, to the world that no longer existed. And he studied this world with obsessive intensity. He was famous for his photographic memory, his arrogance, his sharp tongue, and the unconcealed pleasure he took in pointing out the errors of colleagues. As a colleague once said, “Levine never forgets a bone—and he never lets you forget it, either.”

Field researchers disliked Levine, and he returned the sentiment. He was at heart a man of detail, a cataloguer of animal life, and he was happiest poring over museum collections, reassigning species, rearranging display skeletons. He disliked the dust and inconvenience of life in the field. Given his choice, Levine would never leave the museum. But it was his fate to live in the greatest period of discovery in the history of paleontology. The number of known species of dinosaurs had doubled in the last twenty years, and new species were now being described at the rate of one every seven weeks. Thus Levine’s worldwide reputation forced him to continually travel around the world, inspecting new finds, and rendering his expert opinion to researchers who were annoyed to admit that they needed it.

“Where’d you come from?” Guitierrez asked him.

“Mongolia,” Levine said. “I was at the Flaming Cliffs, in the Gobi Desert, three hours out of Ulan Bator.”

“Oh? What’s there?”

“John Roxton’s got a dig. He found an incomplete skeleton he thought might be a new species of Velociraptor, and wanted me to have a look.”

“And?”

Levine shrugged. “Roxton never really did know anatomy. He’s an enthusiastic fund-raiser, but if he actually uncovers something, he’s incompetent to proceed.”

“You told him that?”

“Why not? It’s the truth.”

“And the skeleton?”

“The skeleton wasn’t a raptor at all,” Levine said. “Metatarsals all wrong, pubis too ventral, ischium lacking a proper obturator, and the long bones much too light. As for the skull …” He rolled his eyes. “The palatal’s too thick, antorbital fenestrae too rostral, distal carina too small—oh, it goes on and on. And the trenchant ungual’s hardly present. So there we are. I don’t know what Roxton could have been thinking. I suspect he actually has a subspecies of Troodon, though I haven’t decided for sure.”

“Troodon?” Guitierrez said.

“Small Cretaceous carnivore—two meters from pes to acetabulum. In point of fact, a rather ordinary theropod. And Roxton’s find wasn’t a particularly interesting example. Although there was one curious detail. The material included an integumental artifact—an imprint of the dinosaur’s skin. That in itself is not rare. There are perhaps a dozen good skin impressions obtained so far, mostly among the Hadrosauridae. But nothing like this. Because it was clear to me that this animal’s skin had some very unusual characteristics not previously suspected in dinosaurs—”

“Señores,” the pilot said, interrupting them, “Juan Fernández Bay is ahead.”

Levine said, “Circle it first, can we?”

Levine looked out the window, his expression intense again, the conversation forgotten. They were flying over jungle that extended up into the hills for miles, as far as they could see. The helicopter banked, circling the beach.

“There it is now,” Guitierrez said, pointing out the window.

The beach was a clean, curving white crescent, entirely deserted in the afternoon light. To the south, they saw a single dark mass in the sand. From the air, it looked like a rock, or perhaps a large clump of seaweed. The shape was amorphous, about five feet across. There were lots of footprints around it.

“Who’s been here?” Levine said, with a sigh.

“Public Health Service people came out earlier today.”

“Did they do anything?” he said. “They touch it, disturb it in any way?”

“I can’t say,” Guitierrez said.

“The Public Health Service,” Levine repeated, shaking his head. “What do they know? You should never have let them near it, Marty.”

“Hey,” Guitierrez said. “I don’t run this country. I did the best I could. They wanted to destroy it before you even got here. At least I managed to keep it intact until you arrived. Although I don’t know how long they’ll wait.”

“Then we’d better get started,” Levine said. He pressed the button on his mike. “Why are we still circling? We’re losing light. Get down on the beach now. I want to see this thing firsthand.”

Richard Levine ran across the sand toward the dark shape, his binoculars bouncing on his chest. Even from a distance, he could smell the stench of decay. And already he was logging his preliminary impressions. The carcass lay half-buried in the sand, surrounded by a thick cloud of flies. The skin was bloated with gas, which made identification difficult.

He paused a few yards from the creature, and took out his camera. Immediately, the pilot of the helicopter came up alongside him, pushing his hand down. “No permitido.”

“What?”

“I am sorry, señor. No pictures are allowed.”

“Why the hell not?” Levine said. He turned to Guitierrez, who was trotting down the beach toward them. “Marty, why no pictures? This could be an important—”

“No pictures,” the pilot said again, and he pulled the camera out of Levine’s hand.

“Marty, this is crazy.”

“Just go ahead and make your examination,” Guitierrez said, and then he began speaking in Spanish to the pilot, who answered sharply and angrily, waving his hands.

Levine watched a moment, then turned away. The hell with this, he thought. They could argue forever. He hurried forward, breathing through his mouth. The odor became much stronger as he approached it. Although the carcass was large he noticed there were no birds, rats, or other scavengers feeding on it. There were only flies—flies so dense they covered the skin, and obscured the outline of the dead animal.

Even so, it was clear that this had been a substantial creature, roughly the size of a cow or horse before the bloat began to enlarge it further. The dry skin had cracked in the sun and was now peeling upward, exposing the layer of runny, yellow subdermal fat beneath.

Oof, it stunk! Levine winced. He forced himself closer, directing all his attention to the animal.

Although it was the size of a cow, it was clearly not a mammal. The skin was hairless. The original skin color appeared to have been green, with a suggestion of darker striations running through it. The epidermal surface was pebbled in polygonal tubercles of varying sizes, the pattern reminiscent of the skin of a lizard. This texture varied in different parts of the animal, the pebbling larger and less distinct on the underbelly. There were prominent skin folds at the neck, shoulder, and hip joints—again, like a lizard.

But the carcass was large. Levine estimated the animal had originally weighed about a hundred kilograms, roughly two hundred and twenty pounds. No lizards grew that large anywhere in the world, except the Komodo dragons of Indonesia. Varanus komodoensis were nine-foot-long monitor lizards, crocodile-size carnivores that ate goats and pigs, and on occasion human beings as well. But there were no monitor lizards anywhere in the New World. Of course, it was conceivable that this was one of the Iguanidae. Iguanas were found all over South America, and the marine iguanas grew quite large. Even so, this would be a record-size animal.

Levine moved slowly around the carcass, toward the front of the animal. No, he thought, it wasn’t a lizard. The carcass lay on its side, its left rib cage toward the sky. Nearly half of it was buried; the row of protuberances that marked the dorsal spinous processes of the backbone were just a few inches above the sand. The long neck was curved, the head hidden beneath the bulk of the body like a duck’s head under feathers. Levine saw one forelimb, which seemed small and weak. The distal appendage was buried in sand. He would dig that out and have a look at it, but he wanted to take pictures before he disturbed the specimen in situ.

In fact, the more Levine saw of this carcass, the more carefully he thought he should proceed. Because one thing was clear—this was a very rare, and possibly unknown, animal. Levine felt simultaneously excited and cautious. If this discovery was as significant as he was beginning to think it was, then it was essential that it be properly documented.

Up the beach, Guitierrez was still shouting at the pilot, who kept shaking his head stubbornly. These banana-republic bureaucrats, Levine thought. Why shouldn’t he take pictures? It couldn’t harm anything. And it was vital to document the changing state of the creature.

He heard a thumping, and looked up to see a second helicopter circling the bay, its dark shadow sliding across the sand. This helicopter was ambulance-white, with red lettering on the side. In the glare of the setting sun, he couldn’t read it.

He turned back to the carcass, noticing now that the hind leg of the animal was powerfully muscled, very different from the foreleg. It suggested that this creature walked upright, balanced on strong hind legs. Many lizards were known to stand upright, of course, but none so large as this. In point of fact, as Levine looked at the general shape of the carcass, he felt increasingly certain that this was not a lizard.

He worked quickly now, for the light was fading and he had much to do. With every specimen, there were always two major questions to answer, both equally important. First, what was the animal? Second, why had it died?

Standing by the thigh, he saw the epidermis was split open, no doubt from the gaseous subcutaneous buildup. But as Levine looked more closely, he saw that the split was in fact a sharp gash, and that it ran deep through the femorotibialis, exposing red muscle and pale bone beneath. He ignored the stench, and the white maggots that wriggled across the open tissues of the gash, because he realized that—

“Sorry about all this,” Guitierrez said, coming over. “But the pilot just refuses.”

The pilot was nervously following Guitierrez, standing beside him, watching carefully.

“Marty,” Levine said. “I really need to take pictures here.”

“I’m afraid you can’t,” Guitierrez said, with a shrug.

“It’s important, Marty.”

“Sorry. I tried my best.”

Farther down the beach, the white helicopter landed, its whine diminishing. Men in uniforms began getting out.

“Marty. What do you think this animal is?”

“Well, I can only guess,” Guitierrez said. “From the general dimensions I’d call it a previously unidentified iguana. It’s extremely large, of course, and obviously not native to Costa Rica. My guess is this animal came from the Galápagos, or one of the—”

“No, Marty,” Levine said. “It’s not an iguana.”

“Before you say anything more,” Guitierrez said, glancing at the pilot, “I think you ought to know that several previously unknown species of lizard have shown up in this area. Nobody’s quite sure why. Perhaps it’s due to the cutting of the rain forest, or some other reason. But new species are appearing. Several years ago, I began to see unidentified species of—”

“Marty. It’s not a damn lizard.”

Guitierrez blinked his eyes. “What are you saying? Of course it’s a lizard.”

“I don’t think so,” Levine said.

Guitierrez said, “You’re probably just thrown off because of its size. The fact is, here in Costa Rica, we occasionally encounter these aberrant forms—”

“Marty,” Levine said coldly. “I am never thrown off.”

“Well, of course, I didn’t mean that—”

“And I am telling you, this is not a lizard,” Levine said.

“I’m sorry,” Guitierrez said, shaking his head. “But I can’t agree.”

Back at the white helicopter, the men were huddled together, putting on white surgical masks.

“I’m not asking you to agree,” Levine said. He turned back to the carcass. “The diagnosis is settled easily enough, all we need do is excavate the head, or for that matter any of the limbs, for example this thigh here, which I believe—”

He broke off, and leaned closer. He peered at the back of the thigh.

“What is it?” Guitierrez said.

“Give me your knife.”

“Why?” Guitierrez said.

“Just give it to me.”

Guitierrez fished out his pocketknife, put the handle in Levine’s outstretched hand. Levine peered steadily at the carcass. “I think you will find this interesting.”

“What?”

“Right along the posterior dermal line, there is a—”

Suddenly, they heard shouting on the beach, and looked up to see the men from the white helicopter running down the beach toward them. They carried tanks on their backs, and were shouting in Spanish.

“What are they saying?” Levine asked, frowning.

Guitierrez sighed. “They’re saying to get back.”

“Tell them we’re busy,” Levine said, and bent over the carcass again.

But the men kept shouting, and suddenly there was a roaring sound, and Levine looked up to see flamethrowers igniting, big red jets of flame roaring out in the evening light. He ran around the carcass toward the men, shouting, “No! No!”

But the men paid no attention.

He shouted, “No, this is a priceless—”

The first of the uniformed men grabbed Levine, and threw him roughly to the sand.

“What the hell are you doing?” Levine yelled, scrambling to his feet. But even as he said it, he saw it was too late, the first of the flames had reached the carcass, blackening the skin, igniting the pockets of methane with a blue whump! The smoke from the carcass began to rise thickly into the sky.

“Stop it! Stop it!” Levine turned to Guitierrez. “Make them stop it!”

But Guitierrez was not moving, he was staring at the carcass. Consumed by flames, the torso crackled and the fat sputtered, and then as the skin burned away, the black, flat ribs of the skeleton were revealed, and then the whole torso turned, and suddenly the neck of the animal swung up, surrounded by flames, moving as the skin contracted. And inside the flames Levine saw a long pointed snout, and rows of sharp predatory teeth, and hollow eye sockets, the whole thing burning like some medieval dragon rising in flames up into the sky.

San José

Levine sat in the bar of the San José airport, nursing a beer, waiting for his plane back to the States. Guitierrez sat beside him at a small table, not saying much. An awkward silence had fallen for the last few minutes. Guitierrez stared at Levine’s backpack, on the floor by his feet. It was specially constructed of dark-green Gore-Tex, with extra pockets on the outside for all the electronic gear.

“Pretty nice pack,” Guitierrez said. “Where’d you get that, anyway? Looks like a Thorne pack.”

Levine sipped his beer. “It is.”

“Nice,” Guitierrez said, looking at it. “What’ve you got there in the top flap, a satellite phone? And a GPS? Boy, what won’t they think of next. Pretty slick. Must have cost you a—”

“Marty,” Levine said, in an exasperated tone. “Cut the crap. Are you going to tell me, or not?”

“Tell you what?”

“I want to know what the hell’s going on here.”

“Richard, look, I’m sorry if you—”

“No,” Levine said, cutting him off. “That was a very important specimen on that beach, Marty, and it was destroyed. I don’t understand why you let it happen.”

Guitierrez sighed. He looked around at the tourists at the other tables and said, “This has to be in confidence, okay?”

“All right.”

“It’s a big problem here.”

“What is.”

“There have been, uh … aberrant forms … turning up on the coast every so often. It’s been going on for several years now.”

“ ‘Aberrant forms’? ” Levine repeated, shaking his head in disbelief.

“That’s the official term for these specimens,” Guitierrez said. “No one in the government is willing to be more precise. It started about five years ago. A number of animals were discovered up in the mountains, near a remote agricultural station that was growing test varieties of soy beans.”

“Soy beans,” Levine repeated.

Guitierrez nodded. “Apparently these animals are attracted to beans, and certain grasses. The assumption is that they have a great need for the amino acid lysine in their diets. But nobody is really sure. Perhaps they just have a taste for certain crops—”

“Marty,” Levine said. “I don’t care if they have a taste for beer and pretzels. The only important question is: where did the animals come from?”

“Nobody knows,” Guitierrez said.

Levine let that pass, for the moment. “What happened to those other animals?”

“They were all destroyed. And to my knowledge, no others were found for years afterward. But now it seems to be starting again. In the last year, we have found the remains of four more animals, including the one you saw today.”

“And what was done?”

“The, ah, aberrant forms are always destroyed. Just as you saw. From the beginning, the government’s taken every possible step to make sure nobody finds out about it. A few years back, some North American journalists began reporting there was something wrong on one island, Isla Nublar. Menéndez invited a bunch of journalists down for a special tour of the island—and proceeded to fly them to the wrong island. They never knew the difference. Stuff like that. I mean, the government’s very serious about this.”

“Why?”

“They’re worried.”

“Worried? Why should they be worried about—”

Guitierrez held up his hand, shifted in his chair, moved closer. “Disease, Richard.”

“Disease?”

“Yeah. Costa Rica has one of the best health-care systems in the world,” Guitierrez said. “The epidemiologists have been tracking some weird type of encephalitis that seems to be on the increase, particularly along the coast.”

“Encephalitis? Of what origin? Viral?”

Guitierrez shook his head. “No causative agent has been found.”

“Marty …”

“I’m telling you, Richard. Nobody knows. It’s not a virus, because antibody titres don’t go up, and white-cell differentials don’t change. It’s not bacterial, because nothing has ever been cultured. It’s a complete mystery. All the epidemiologists know is that it seems to affect primarily rural farmers: people who are around animals and livestock. And it’s a true encephalitis—splitting headaches, mental confusion, fever, delirium.”

“Mortality?”

“So far it seems to be self-limited, lasts about three weeks. But even so it’s got the government worried. This country is dependent on tourism, Richard. Nobody wants talk of unknown diseases.”

“So they think the encephalitis is related to these, ah, aberrant forms?”

He shrugged. “Lizards carry lots of viral diseases,” Guitierrez said. “They’re a known vector. So it’s not unreasonable, there might be a connection.”

“But you said this isn’t a viral disease.”

“Whatever it is. They think it’s related.”

Levine said, “All the more reason to find out where these lizards are coming from. Surely they must have searched …”

“Searched?” Guitierrez said, with a laugh. “Of course they’ve searched. They’ve gone over every square inch of this country, again and again. They’ve sent out dozens of search parties—I’ve led several myself. They’ve done aerial surveys. They’ve had overflights of the jungle. They’ve had overflights of the offshore islands. That in itself is a big job. There are quite a few islands, you know, particularly along the west coast. Hell, they’ve even searched the ones that are privately owned.”

“Are there privately owned islands?” Levine asked.

“A few. Three or four. Like Isla Nublar—it was leased to an American company, InGen, for years.”

“But you said that island was searched …”

“Thoroughly searched. Nothing there.”

“And the others?”

“Well, let’s see,” Guitierrez said, ticking them off on his fingers. “There’s Isla Talamanca, on the east coast; they’ve got a Club Med there. There’s Sorna, on the west coast; it’s leased to a German mining company. And there’s Morazan, up north; it’s actually owned by a wealthy Costa Rican family. And there may be another island I’ve forgotten about.”

“And the searches found what?”

“Nothing,” Guitierrez said. “They’ve found nothing at all. So the assumption is that the animals are coming from some location deep in the jungle. And that’s why we haven’t been able to find it so far.”

Levine grunted. “In that case, lots of luck.”

“I know,” Guitierrez said. “Rain forest is an incredibly good environment for concealment. A search party could pass within ten yards of a large animal and never see it. And even the most advanced remote sensing technology doesn’t help much, because there are multiple layers to penetrate—clouds, tree canopy, lower-level flora. There’s just no way around it: almost anything could be hiding in the rain forest. Anyway,” he said, “the government’s frustrated. And, of course, the government is not the only interested party.”

Levine looked up sharply. “Oh?”

“Yes. For some reason, there’s been a lot of interest in these animals.”

“What sort of interest?” Levine said, as casually as he could.

“Last fall, the government issued a permit to a team of botanists from Berkeley to do an aerial survey of the jungle canopy in the central highlands. The survey had been going on for a month when a dispute arose—a bill for aviation fuel, or something like that. Anyway, a bureaucrat in San José called Berkeley to complain. And Berkeley said they’d never heard of this survey team. Meantime, the team fled the country.”

“So nobody knows who they really were?”

“No. Then last winter, a couple of Swiss geologists showed up to collect gas samples from offshore islands, as part of a study, they said, of volcanic activity in Central America. The offshore islands are all volcanic, and most of them are still active to some degree, so it seemed like a reasonable request. But it turned out the ‘geologists’ really worked for an American genetics company called Biosyn, and they were looking for, uh, large animals on the islands.”

“Why would a biotech company be interested?” Levine said. “It makes no sense.”

“Maybe not to you and me,” Guitierrez said, “but Biosyn’s got a particularly unsavory reputation. Their head of research is a guy named Lewis Dodgson.”

“Oh yeah,” Levine said. “I know. He’s the guy who ran that rabies-vaccine test in Chile a few years back. The one where they exposed farmers to rabies but didn’t tell them they were doing it.”

“That’s him. He also started test-marketing a genetically engineered potato in supermarkets without telling anybody they were altered. Gave kids low-grade diarrhea; couple of them ended up in the hospital. After that, the company had to hire George Baselton to fix their image.”

“Seems like everybody hires Baselton,” Levine said.

Guitierrez shrugged. “The big-name university professors consult, these days. It’s part of the deal. And Baselton is Regis Professor of Biology. The company needed him to clean up their mess, because Dodgson has a habit of breaking the law. Dodgson has people on his payroll all around the world. Steals other companies’ research, the whole bit. They say Biosyn’s the only genetics company with more lawyers than scientists.”

“And why were they interested in Costa Rica?” Levine asked.

Guitierrez shrugged. “I don’t know, but the whole attitude toward research has changed, Richard. It’s very noticeable here. Costa Rica has one of the richest ecologies in the world. Half a million species in twelve distinct environmental habitats. Five percent of all the species on the planet are represented here. This country has been a biological research center for years, and I can tell you, things have changed. In the old days, the people who came here were dedicated scientists with a passion to learn about something for its own sake—howler monkeys, or polistine wasps, or the sombrilla plant. These people had chosen their field because they cared about it. They certainly weren’t going to get rich. But now, everything in the biosphere is potentially valuable. Nobody knows where the next drug is coming from, so drug companies fund all sorts of research. Maybe a bird egg has a protein that makes it waterproof. Maybe a spider produces a peptide that inhibits blood clotting. Maybe the waxy surface of a fern contains a painkiller. It happens often enough that attitudes toward research have changed. People aren’t studying the natural world any more, they’re mining it. It’s a looter mentality. Anything new or unknown is automatically of interest, because it might have value. It might be worth a fortune.”

Guitierrez drained his beer. “The world,” he said, “is turned upside down. And the fact is that a lot of people want to know what these aberrant animals represent—and where they come from.”

The loudspeaker called Levine’s flight. Both men stood up from the table. Guitierrez said, “You’ll keep all this to yourself? I mean, what you saw today.”

“To be quite honest,” Levine said, “I don’t know what I saw today. It could have been anything.”

Guitierrez grinned. “Safe flight, Richard.”

“Take care, Marty.”

Departure

His backpack slung over his shoulder, Levine walked toward the departure lounge. He turned to wave goodbye to Guitierrez, but his friend was already heading out the door, raising his arm to wave for a taxi. Levine shrugged, turned back.

Directly ahead was the customs desk, travelers lined up to have their passports stamped. He was booked on a night flight to San Francisco, with a long stopover in Mexico City; not many people were queuing up. He probably had time to call his office, and leave word for his secretary, Linda, that he would be on the flight; and perhaps, he thought, he should also call Malcolm. Looking around, he saw a row of phones marked ICT TELEFONOS INTERNATIONAL along the wall to his right, but there were only a few, and all were in use. He had better use the satellite phone in his backpack, he thought, as he swung the pack off his shoulder, and perhaps it would be—

He paused, frowning.

He looked back at the wall.

Four people were using the phones. The first was a blonde woman in shorts and a halter top, bouncing a young sunburned child in her arms as she talked. Next to her stood a bearded man in a safari jacket, who glanced repeatedly at his gold Rolex watch. Then there was a gray-haired, grandmotherly woman talking in Spanish, while her two full-grown sons stood by, nodding emphatically.

And the last person was the helicopter pilot. He had removed his uniform jacket, and was standing in short sleeves and tie. He was turned away, facing the wall, shoulders hunched.

Levine moved closer, and heard the pilot speaking in English. Levine set his pack down and bent over it, pretending to adjust the straps while he listened. The pilot was still turned away from him.

He heard the pilot say, “No, no, Professor. It is not that way. No.” Then there was a pause. “No,” the pilot said. “I am telling to you, no. I am sorry, Professor Baselton, but this is not known. It is an island, but which one … We must wait again for more. No, he leaves tonight. No, I think he does not know anything, and no pictures. No. I understand. Adiós.”

Levine ducked his head as the pilot walked briskly toward the LACS A desk at the other end of the airport.

What the hell? he thought.

It is an island, but which one …

How did they know it was an island? Levine himself was still not sure of that. And he had been working intensively on these finds, day and night, trying to put it together. Where they had come from. Why it was happening.

He walked around the corner, out of sight, and pulled out the little satellite phone. He dialed it quickly, calling a number in San Francisco.

The call went through, rapidly clicking as it linked with the satellite. It began to ring. There was a beep. An electronic voice said, “Please enter your access code.”

Levine punched in a six-digit number.

There was another beep. The electronic voice said, “Leave your message.”

“I’m calling,” Levine said, “with the results of the trip. Single specimen, not in good shape. Location: BB-17 on your map. That’s far south, which fits all of our hypotheses. I wasn’t able to make a precise identification before they burned the specimen. But my guess is that it was an ornitholestes. As you know, this animal is not on the list—a highly significant finding.”

He glanced around, but no one was near him, no one was paying attention. “Furthermore, the lateral femur was cut in a deep gash. This is extremely disturbing.” He hesitated, not wanting to say too much. “And I am sending back a sample that requires close examination. I also think some other people are interested. Anyway, whatever is going on down here is new, Ian. There haven’t been any specimens for over a year, and now they’re showing up again. Something new is happening. And we don’t understand it at all.”

Or do we? Levine thought. He pressed the disconnect, turned the phone off, and replaced it in the outer pocket of his backpack. Maybe, he thought, we know more than we realize. He looked thoughtfully toward the departure gate. It was time to catch his flight.

Palo Alto

At 2 a.m., Ed James pulled into the nearly deserted parking lot of the Marie Callender’s on Carter Road. The black BMW was already there, parked near the entrance. Through the windows, he could see Dodgson sitting inside at a booth, his bland features frowning. Dodgson was never in a good mood. Right now he was talking to the heavyset man alongside him, and glancing at his watch. The heavyset man was Baselton. The professor who appeared on television. James always felt relieved whenever Baselton was there. Dodgson gave him the creeps, but it was hard to imagine Baselton involved in anything shady.

James turned off the ignition and twisted the rearview mirror so he could see as he buttoned his shirt collar and pulled up his tie. He glimpsed his face in the mirror—a disheveled, tired man with a two-day stubble of beard. What the hell, he thought. Why shouldn’t he look tired? It was the middle of the fucking night.

Dodgson always scheduled his meetings in the middle of the night, and always at this same damn Marie Callender restaurant. James never understood why; the coffee was awful. But then, there was a lot he didn’t understand.

He picked up the manila envelope, and got out of the car, slamming the door. He headed for the entrance, shaking his head. Dodgson had been paying him five hundred dollars a day for weeks now, to follow a bunch of scientists around. At first, James had assumed it was some sort of industrial espionage. But none of the scientists worked for industry; they held university appointments, in pretty dull fields. Like that paleobotanist Sattler whose specialty was prehistoric pollen grains. James had sat through one of her lectures at Berkeley, and had barely been able to stay awake. Slide after slide of little pale spheres that looked like cotton balls, while she nattered on about polysaccharide bonding angles and the Campanian-Maastrichtian boundary. Jesus, it was boring.

Certainly not worth five hundred dollars a day, he thought. He went inside, blinking in the light, and walked over to the booth. He sat down, nodded to Dodgson and Baselton, and raised his hand to order coffee from the waitress.

Dodgson glared at him. “I haven’t got all night,” he said. “Let’s get started.”

“Right,” James said, lowering his hand. “Fine, sure.” He opened the envelope, began pulling out sheets and photos, handing them across the table to Dodgson as he talked.

“Alan Grant: paleontologist at Montana State. At the moment he’s on leave of absence and is now in Paris, lecturing on the latest dinosaur finds. Apparently he has some new ideas about tyrannosaurs being scavengers, and—”

“Never mind,” Dodgson said. “Go on.”

“Ellen Sattler Reiman,” James said, pushing across a photo. “Botanist, used to be involved with Grant. Now married to a physicist at Berkeley and has a young son and daughter. She lectures half-time at the university. Spends the rest of her time at home, because—”

“Go on, go on.”

“Well. Most of the rest are deceased. Donald Gennaro, lawyer … died of dysentery on a business trip. Dennis Nedry, Integrated Computer Systems … also deceased. John Hammond, who started International Genetic Technologies … died while visiting the company’s research facility in Costa Rica. Hammond had his grandchildren with him at the time; the kids live with their mother back east and—”

“Anybody contact them? Anybody from InGen?”

“No, no contact. The boy’s started college and the girl is in prep school. And InGen filed for Chapter 11 protection after Hammond died. It’s been in the courts ever since. The hard assets are finally being sold off. During the last two weeks, as a matter of fact.”

Baselton spoke for the first time. “Is Site B involved in that sale?”

James looked blank. “Site B?”

“Yes. Has anybody talked to you about Site B?”

“No, I’ve never heard of it before. What is it?”

“If you hear anything about Site B,” Baselton said, “we want to know.”

Sitting beside Baselton in the booth, Dodgson thumbed through the pictures and data sheets, then tossed them aside impatiently. He looked up at James. “What else have you got?”

“That’s all, Dr. Dodgson.”

“That’s all?” Dodgson said. “What about Malcolm? And what about Levine? Are they still friends?”

James consulted his notes. “I’m not sure.”

Baselton frowned. “Not sure?” he said. “What do you mean, you’re not sure?”

“Malcolm met Levine at the Santa Fe Institute,” James said. “They spent time together there, a couple of years ago. But Malcolm hasn’t gone back to Santa Fe recently. He’s taken a visiting lectureship at Berkeley in the biology department. He teaches mathematical models of evolution. And he seems to have lost contact with Levine.”

“They have a falling out?”

“Maybe. I was told they argued about Levine’s expedition.”

“What expedition?” Dodgson said, leaning forward.

“Levine’s been planning some kind of expedition for a year or so. He’s ordered special vehicles from a company called Mobile Field Systems. It’s a small operation in Woodside, run by a guy named Jack Thorne. Thorne outfits Jeeps and trucks for scientists doing field research. Scientists in Africa and Sichuan and Chile all swear by them.”

“Malcolm knows about this expedition?”

“He must. He’s gone to Thorne’s place, occasionally. Every month or so. And of course Levine’s been going there almost every day. That’s how he got thrown in jail.”

“Thrown in jail?” Baselton said.

“Yeah,” James said, glancing at his notes. “Let’s see. February tenth, Levine was arrested for driving a hundred and twenty in a fifteen zone. Right in front of Woodside Junior High. The judge impounded his Ferrari, yanked his license, and gave him community service. Basically ordered him to teach a class at the school.”

Baselton smiled. “Richard Levine teaching junior high. I’d love to see that.”

“He’s been pretty conscientious. Of course he’s spending time in Woodside, anyway, with Thorne. That is, until he left the country.”

“When did he leave the country?” Dodgson said.

“Two days ago. He went to Costa Rica. Short trip, he was due back early this morning.”

“And where is he now?”

“I don’t know. And I’m afraid, uh, it’s going to be hard to find out.”

“Why is that?”

James hesitated, coughed. “Because he was on the passenger manifest of the flight from Costa Rica—but he wasn’t on the plane when it landed. My contact in Costa Rica says he checked out of his hotel in San José before the flight, and never went back. Didn’t take any other flight out of the city. So, uh, for the moment, I’m afraid that Richard Levine has disappeared.”

There was a long silence. Dodgson sat back in the booth, hissing between his teeth. He looked at Baselton, who shook his head. Dodgson very carefully picked up all the sheets of paper, tapped them on the table, making a neat stack. He slipped them back into the manila envelope, and handed the envelope to James.

“Now listen, you stupid son of a bitch,” Dodgson said. “There’s only one thing I want from you now. It’s very simple. Are you listening?”

James swallowed. “I’m listening.”

Dodgson leaned across the table. “Find him,” he said.

Berkeley

In his cluttered office, Malcolm looked up from his desk as his assistant, Beverly, came into the room. She was followed by a man from DHL, carrying a small box.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Dr. Malcolm, but you have to sign these forms.… It’s that sample from Costa Rica.”

Malcolm stood, and walked around the desk. He didn’t use his cane. In recent weeks, he had been working steadily to walk without the cane. He still had occasional pain in his leg, but he was determined to make progress. Even his physical therapist, a perpetually cheery woman named Cindy, had commented on it. “Gee, after all these years, suddenly you’re motivated, Dr. Malcolm,” she had said. “What’s going on?”

“Oh, you know,” Malcolm had said to her. “Can’t rely on a cane forever.”

The truth was rather different. Confronted by Levine’s relentless enthusiasm for the lost-world hypothesis, his excited telephone calls at all hours of the day and night, Malcolm had begun to reconsider his own views. And he had come to believe that it was quite possible—even probable—that extinct animals existed in a remote, previously unsuspected location. Malcolm had his own reasons for thinking so, which he had only hinted at to Levine.

But the possibility of another island location was what led him to walk unaided. He wanted to prepare for a future visit to this island. And so he had begun to make the effort, day after day.

He and Levine had narrowed their search down to a string of islands along the Costa Rican coast, and Levine was as always very intense in his excitement. But to Malcolm it remained hypothetical.

He refused to get excited until there was hard evidence—photographs, or actual tissue samples—to demonstrate the existence of new animals. And so far, Malcolm had seen nothing at all. He was not sure whether he was disappointed or relieved.

But in any case, Levine’s sample had arrived.

Malcolm took the clipboard from the delivery man and quickly signed the top form: “Delivery of Excluded Materials / Samples: Biological Research.”

The delivery man said, “You have to check the boxes, sir.”

Malcolm looked at the list of questions running down the page, with a check box beside each. Was the specimen alive. Was the specimen cultures of bacteria, fungi, viruses, or protozoa. Was the specimen registered under an established research protocol. Was the specimen contagious. Was the specimen taken from a farm or animal-husbandry site. Was the specimen plant matter, propagative seeds, or bulbs. Was the specimen insect or insect-related.…

He checked off “No” to everything.

“And the next page, too, sir,” the delivery man said. He was looking around the office, at the stacks of papers heaped untidily about, the maps on the walls with the colored pins stuck in them. “You do medical research here?”

Malcolm flipped the page, scrawled his signature on the next form. “No.”

“And one more, sir.…”

The third form was a release of liability to the carrier. Malcolm signed it as well. The delivery man said, “Have a good day,” and left.

Immediately Malcolm sagged, resting his weight on the edge of the desk. He winced.

“Still hurt?” Beverly said. She took the specimen to the side table, pushed some papers away, and began to unwrap it.

“I’m okay.” He looked over at the cane, resting beside his chair behind the desk. Then he took a breath, and crossed the room, slowly.

Beverly had the wrapping off the package, revealing a small stainless-steel cylinder the size of his fist. A triple-bladed biohazard sign was taped across the screwtop lid. Attached to the cylinder was a second small canister with a metal valve; it contained the refrigerant gas.

Malcolm swung the light over the cylinder, and said, “Let’s see what he was so excited about.” He broke the taped seal and unscrewed the lid. There was a hiss of gas, and a faint white puff of condensation. The exterior of the cylinder frosted over.

Peering in, he saw a plastic baggie, and a sheet of paper. He upended the cylinder, dumping the contents onto the table. The baggie contained a ragged piece of greenish flesh about two inches square, with a small green plastic tag attached to it. He held it up to the light, examined it with a magnifying glass, then set it down again. He looked at the green skin, the pebbled texture.

Maybe, he thought.

Maybe …

“Beverly,” he said, “call Elizabeth Gelman, over at the zoo. Tell her I have something I want her to look at. And tell her it’s confidential.”

Beverly nodded, and went out of the room to phone. Alone, Malcolm unrolled the strip of paper that had come with the sample. It was a piece of paper torn from a yellow legal pad. In block printing, it said:

I WAS RIGHT AND YOU WERE WRONG.

Malcolm frowned. That son of a bitch, he thought. “Beverly? After you call Elizabeth, get Richard Levine at his office. I need to talk to him right away.”

The Lost World

Richard Levine pressed his face to the warm rock cliff, and paused to catch his breath. Five hundred feet below, the ocean surged, waves thundering brilliant white against the black rocks. The boat that had brought him was already heading east again, a small white speck on the horizon. It had to return, for there was no safe harbor anywhere on this desolate, inhospitable island.

For now, they were on their own.

Levine took a deep breath, and looked down at Diego, twenty feet below him on the cliff face. Diego was burdened with the backpack that contained all their equipment, but he was young and strong. He smiled cheerfully, and nodded his head upward. “Have courage. It is not far now, señor.”

“I hope so,” Levine said. When he had examined the cliff through binoculars from the boat, this had seemed like a good place to make the ascent. But in fact, the cliff face was nearly vertical, and incredibly dangerous because the volcanic rock was crumbling and friable.

Levine raised his arms, fingers extending upward, reaching for the next handhold. He clung to the rock; small pebbles broke free and his hand slipped down. He gripped again, then pulled himself upward. He was breathing hard, from exertion and fear.

“Just twenty meters more, señor,” Diego said encouragingly. “You can do it.”

“I’m sure I can,” Levine muttered. “Considering the alternative.” As he neared the top of the cliff, the wind blew harder, whistling in his ears, tugging at his clothes. It felt as if it was trying to suck him away from the rock. Looking up, he saw the dense foliage that grew right to the edge of the cliff face.

Almost there, he thought. Almost.

And then, with a final heave, he pushed himself over the top and collapsed, rolling in soft wet ferns. Still gasping, he looked back and saw Diego come over lightly, easily; he squatted on the mossy grass, and smiled. Levine turned away, staring at the huge ferns overhead, releasing the accumulated tension of the climb in long shuddering breaths. His legs burned fiercely.

But no matter—he was here! Finally!

He looked at the jungle around him. It was primary forest, undisturbed by the hand of man. Exactly as the satellite images had shown. Levine had been forced to rely on satellite photographs, because there were no maps available of private islands such as this one. This island existed as a kind of lost world, isolated in the midst of the Pacific Ocean.

Levine listened to the sound of the wind, the rustle of the palm fronds that dripped water onto his face. And then he heard another sound, distant, like the cry of a bird, but deeper, more resonant. As he listened, he heard it again.

A sharp sizzle nearby made him look over. Diego had struck a match, was raising it to light a cigarette. Quickly, Levine sat up, pushed the younger man’s hand away, and shook his head, no.

Diego frowned, puzzled.

Levine put his finger to his lips.

He pointed in the direction of the bird sound.

Diego shrugged, his expression indifferent. He was unimpressed. He saw no reason for concern.

That was because he didn’t understand what they were up against, Levine thought, as he unzipped the dark-green backpack, and began to assemble the big Lindstradt rifle. The rifle had been specially manufactured for him in Sweden, and represented the latest in animal-control technology. He screwed the barrel into the stock, locked in the Fluger clip, checked the gas charge, and handed the rifle to Diego. Diego took it with another shrug.

Meanwhile, Levine removed the black anodized Lindstradt pistol in its holster, and buckled it around his waist. He removed the pistol, checked the safety twice, and put the pistol back in the holster. Levine got to his feet, gestured for Diego to follow him. Diego zipped up the backpack, and shouldered it again.

The two men started down the sloping hillside, away from the cliff. Almost immediately, their clothes were soaked from the wet foliage. They had no views; they were surrounded on all sides by dense jungle, and could see only a few yards ahead. The fronds of the ferns were enormous, as long and broad as a man’s body, the plants twenty feet tall, with rough spiky stalks. And high above the ferns, a great canopy of trees blocked most of the sunlight. They moved in darkness, silently, on damp, spongy earth.

Levine paused often, to consult his wrist compass. They were heading west, down a steep slope, toward the interior of the island. He knew that the island was the remains of an ancient volcanic crater, eroded and decomposed by centuries of weathering. The interior terrain consisted of a series of ridges that led down to the floor of the crater. But particularly here on the eastern side, the landscape was steep, rugged, and treacherous.

The sense of isolation, of having returned to a primordial world, was palpable. Levine’s heart pounded as he continued down the slope, across a marshy stream, and then up again. At the top of the next ridge, there was a break in the foliage, and he felt a welcome breeze. From his vantage point, he was able to see to the far side of the island, a rim of hard black cliff, miles away. Between here and the cliffs they saw nothing but gently undulating jungle.

Standing beside him, Diego said, “Fantástico.”

Levine quickly shushed him.

“But señor,” he protested, pointing to the view. “We are alone here.”

Levine shook his head, annoyed. He had gone over all this with Diego, during the boat ride over. Once on the island, no speaking. No hair pomade, no cologne, no cigarettes. All food sealed tightly in plastic bags. Everything packed with great care. Nothing to produce a smell, or make a sound. He had warned Diego, again and again, of the importance of all these precautions.

But now it was obvious that Diego had paid no attention. He didn’t understand. Levine poked Diego angrily, and shook his head again.

Diego smiled. “Señor, please. There are only birds here.”

At that moment, they heard a deep, rumbling sound, an unearthly cry that arose from somewhere in the forest below them. After a moment, the cry was answered, from another part of the forest.

Diego’s eyes widened.

Levine mouthed: Birds?

Diego was silent. He bit his lip, and stared out at the forest.

To the south, they saw a place where the tops of the trees began to move, a whole section of forest that suddenly seemed to come alive, as if brushed by wind. But the rest of the forest was not moving. It was not the wind.

Diego crossed himself quickly.

They heard more cries, lasting nearly a minute, and then silence descended again.

Levine moved off the ridge and headed down the jungle slope, going deeper into the interior.

He was moving forward quickly, looking at the ground, watching for snakes, when he heard a low whistle behind him. He turned and saw Diego pointing to the left.

Levine doubled back, pushed through the fronds, and followed Diego as he moved south. In a few moments, they came upon two parallel tracks in the dirt, long since overgrown with grass and ferns, but clearly recognizable as an old Jeep trail, leading off into the jungle. Of course they would follow it. He knew their progress would be much faster on a road.

Levine gestured, and Diego took off the backpack. It was Levine’s turn; he shouldered the weight, adjusted the straps.

In silence, they started down the road.

In places, the Jeep track was hardly recognizable, so thickly had the jungle grown back. Clearly, no one had used this road for many years, and the jungle was always ready to return.

Behind him, Diego grunted, swore softly. Levine turned and saw Diego lifting his foot gingerly; he had stepped to mid-ankle in a pile of green animal-droppings. Levine went back.

Diego scraped his boot clean on the stem of a fern. The droppings appeared to be composed of pale flecks of hay, mixed with green. The material was light and crumbly—dried, old. There was no smell.

Levine searched the ground carefully, until he found the remainder of the original spoor. The droppings were well formed, twelve centimeters in diameter. Definitely left behind by some large herbivore.

Diego was silent, but his eyes were wide.

Levine shook his head, continued on. As long as they saw signs of herbivora, he wasn’t going to worry. At least, not too much. Even so, his fingers touched the butt of his pistol, as if for reassurance.

* * *

They came to a stream, muddy banks on both sides. Here Levine paused. He saw clear three-toed footprints in the mud, some of them quite large. The palm of his own hand, fingers spread wide, fitted easily inside one of the prints, with room to spare.

When he looked up, Diego was crossing himself again. He held the rifle in his other hand.

They waited at the stream, listening to the gentle gurgle of the water. Something shiny glinted in the stream, catching his eye. He bent over, and plucked it out. It was a piece of glass tubing, roughly the size of a pencil. One end was broken off. There were graduated markings along the side. He realized it was a pipette, of the kind used in laboratories everywhere in the world. Levine held it up to the light, turning it in his fingers. It was odd, he thought. A pipette like this implied—

Levine turned, and caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye. Something small and brown, scurrying across the mud of the riverbank. Something about the size of a rat.

Diego grunted in surprise. Then it was gone, disappearing in foliage.

Levine moved forward and crouched in the mud by the stream. He peered at the footprints left by the tiny animal. The footprints were three-toed, like the tracks of a bird. He saw more three-toed tracks, including some bigger ones, which were several inches across.

Levine had seen such prints before, in trackways such as the Purgatoire River in Colorado, where the ancient shoreline was now fossilized, the dinosaur tracks frozen in stone. But these prints were in fresh mud. And they had been made by living animals.

Sitting on his haunches, Levine heard a soft squeak coming from somewhere to his right. Looking over, he saw the ferns moving slightly. He stayed very still, waiting.

After a moment, a small animal peeked out from among the fronds. It appeared to be the size of a mouse; it had smooth, hairless skin and large eyes mounted high on its tiny head. It was greenish-brown in color, and it made a continuous, irritable squeaking sound at Levine, as if to drive him away. Levine stayed motionless, hardly daring to breathe.

He recognized this creature, of course. It was a mussaurus, a tiny prosauropod from the Late Triassic. Skeletal remains were found only in South America. It was one of the smallest dinosaurs known.

A dinosaur, he thought.

Even though he had expected to see them on this island, it was still startling to be confronted by a living, breathing member of the Dinosauria. Especially one so small. He could not take his eyes off it. He was entranced. After all these years, after all the dusty skeletons—an actual living dinosaur!

The little mussaur ventured farther out from the protection of the fronds. Now Levine could see that it was longer than he had thought at first. It was actually about ten centimeters long, with a surprisingly thick tail. All told, it looked very much like a lizard. It sat upright, squatting on its hind legs on the frond. He saw the rib cage moving as the animal breathed. It waved its tiny forearms in the air at Levine, and squeaked repeatedly.

Slowly, very slowly, Levine extended his hand.

The creature squeaked again, but did not run. If anything it seemed curious, cocking its head the way very small animals do, as Levine’s hand came closer.

Finally Levine’s fingers touched the tip of the frond. The mussaur stood on its hind legs, balancing with its outstretched tail. Showing no sign of fear, it stepped lightly onto Levine’s hand, and stood in the creases of his palm. He hardly felt the weight, it was so light. The mussaur walked around, sniffed Levine’s fingers. Levine smiled, charmed.

Then, suddenly, the little creature hissed in annoyance, and jumped off his hand, disappearing into the palms. Levine blinked, unable to understand why.

Then he smelled a foul odor, and heard a heavy rustling in the bushes on the other side. There was a soft grunting sound. More rustling.

For a brief moment, Levine remembered that carnivores in the wild hunted near streambeds, attacking animals when they were vulnerable, bending over to drink. But the recognition came too late; he heard a terrifying high-pitched cry, and when he turned he saw that Diego was screaming as his body was hauled away, into the bushes. Diego struggled; the bushes shook fiercely; Levine caught a glimpse of a single large foot, its middle toe bearing a short curving claw. Then the foot pulled back. The bushes continued to shake.

Suddenly, the forest erupted in frightening animal roars all around him. He glimpsed a large animal charging him. Richard Levine turned and fled, feeling the adrenaline surge of pure panic, not knowing where to go, knowing only that it was hopeless. He felt a heavy weight suddenly tear at his backpack, forcing him to his knees in the mud, and he realized in that moment that despite all his planning, despite all his clever deductions, things had gone terribly wrong, and he was about to die.

School

“When we consider mass extinction from a meteor impact,” Richard Levine said, “we must ask several questions. First, are there any impact craters on our planet larger than nineteen miles in diameter—which is the smallest size necessary to cause a worldwide extinction event? And second, do any craters match in time a known extinction? It turns out there are a dozen craters this large around the world, of which five coincide with known extinctions.…”

Kelly Curtis yawned in the darkness of her seventh-grade classroom. Sitting at her desk, she propped her chin on her elbows, and tried to stay awake. She already knew this stuff. The TV set in front of the class showed a vast cornfield, seen in an aerial view, the curving outlines faintly visible. She recognized it as the crater in Manson. In the darkness, Dr. Levine’s recorded voice said, “This is the crater in Manson, Iowa, dating from sixty-five million years ago, just when dinosaurs became extinct. But was this the meteor that killed the dinosaurs?”

No, Kelly thought, yawning. Probably the Yucatán peninsula. Manson was too small.

“We now think this crater is too small,” Dr. Levine said aloud. “We believe it was too small by an order of magnitude, and the current candidate is the crater near Mérida, in the Yucatán. It seems difficult to imagine, but the impact emptied the entire Gulf of Mexico, causing two-thousand-foot-high tidal waves to wash over the land. It must have been incredible. But there are disputes about this crater, too, particularly concerning the meaning of the cenote ring structure, and the differential death rates of phytoplankton in ocean deposits. That may sound complicated, but don’t worry about it for now. We’ll go into it in more detail next time. So, that’s it for today.”

The lights came up. Their teacher, Mrs. Menzies, stepped to the front of the class and turned off the computer which had been running the display, and the lecture.

“Well,” she said, “I’m glad Dr. Levine gave us this recording. He told me he might not be back in time for today’s lecture, but he’ll be with us again for sure when we return from spring break next week. Kelly, you and Arby are working for Dr. Levine, is that what he told you?”

Kelly glanced over at Arby, who was slouched low in his seat, frowning.

“Yes, Mrs. Menzies,” Kelly said.

“Good. All right, everyone, the assignment for the holidays is all of chapter seven”—there were groans from the class—“including all of the exercises at the end of part one, as well as part two. Be sure to bring that with you, completed, when we return. Have a good spring break. We’ll see you back here in a week.”

The bell rang; the class got up, chairs scraping, the room suddenly noisy. Arby drifted over to Kelly. He looked up at her mournfully. Arby was a head shorter than Kelly; he was the shortest person in the class. He was also the youngest. Kelly was thirteen, like the other seventh-graders, but Arby was only eleven. He had already been skipped two grades, because he was so smart. And there were rumors he would be skipped again. Arby was a genius, particularly with computers.

Arby put his pen in the pocket of his white button-down shirt, and pushed his horn-rim glasses up on his nose. R. B. Benton was black; both his parents were doctors in San Jose, and they always made sure he was dressed very neatly, like a college kid or something. Which, Kelly reflected, he would probably be in a couple of years, the way he was going.

Standing next to Arby, Kelly always felt awkward and gawky. Kelly had to wear her sister’s old clothes, which her mother had bought from Kmart about a million years ago. She even had to wear Emily’s old Reeboks, which were so scuffed and dirty that they never came clean, even after Kelly ran them through the washing machine. Kelly washed and ironed all her own clothes; her mother never had time. Her mother was never even home, most of the time. Kelly looked enviously at Arby’s neatly pressed khakis, his polished penny loafers, and sighed.

Still, even though she was jealous, Arby was her only real friend—the only person who thought it was okay that she was smart. Kelly worried that he’d be skipped to ninth grade, and she wouldn’t see him any more.

Beside her, Arby still frowned. He looked up at her and said, “Why isn’t Dr. Levine here?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe something happened.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Something.”

“But he promised he would be here,” Arby said. “To take us on the field trip. It was all arranged. We got permission and everything.”

“So? We can still go.”

“But he should be here,” Arby insisted stubbornly. Kelly had seen this behavior before. Arby was accustomed to adults being reliable. His parents were both very reliable. Kelly wasn’t troubled by such ideas.

“Never mind, Arb,” she said. “Let’s just go see Dr. Thorne ourselves.”

“You think so?”

“Sure. Why not?”

Arby hesitated. “Maybe I should call my mom first.”

“Why?” Kelly said. “You know she’ll tell you that you have to go home. Come on, Arb. Let’s just go.”

He hesitated, still troubled. Arby might be smart, but any change in plan always bothered him. Kelly knew from experience he would grumble and argue if she pushed for them to go alone. She had to wait, while he made up his own mind.

“Okay,” he said finally. “Let’s go see Thorne.”

Kelly grinned. “Meet you in front,” she said, “in five minutes.”

As she went down the stairs from the second floor, the singsong chant began again. “Kelly is a brainer, Kelly is a brainer.…”

She held her head high. It was that stupid Allison Stone and her stupid friends. Standing at the bottom of the stairs, taunting her.

“Kelly is a brainer.…”

She swept past the girls, ignoring them. Nearby, she saw Miss Enders, the hall monitor, paying no attention as usual. Even though Mr. Canosa, the assistant principal, had recently made a special homeroom announcement about teasing kids.

Behind her, the girls called: “Kelly is a brainer.… She’s the queen … of the screen … and it’s gonna turn her green.…” They collapsed in laughter.

Up ahead, she saw Arby waiting by the door, a bundle of gray cables in his hand. She hurried forward.

When she got to him, he said, “Forget it.”

“They’re stupid jerkoffs.”

“Right.”

“I don’t care, anyway.”

“I know. Just forget it.”

Behind them, the girls were giggling. “Kel-ly and Ar-by … going to a party … take a bath, in their math.…”

They went outside into the sunlight, the sounds of the girls thankfully drowned in the noise of everyone going home. Yellow school buses were in the parking lot. Kids were streaming down the steps to their parents’ cars, which were lined up all around the block. There was a lot of activity.

Arby ducked a Frisbee that whooshed over his head, and glanced toward the street. “There he is again.”

“Well, don’t look at him,” Kelly said.

“I’m not, I’m not.”

“Remember what Dr. Levine said.”

“Jeez, Kel. I remember, okay?”

Across the street was parked the plain gray Taurus sedan that they had seen, off and on, for the past two months. Behind the wheel, pretending to read a newspaper, was that same man with the scraggly growth of beard. This bearded man had been following Dr. Levine ever since he started to teach the class at Woodside. Kelly believed that man was the reason why Dr. Levine asked her and Arby to be his assistants in the first place.

Levine had told them their job would be to help him by carrying equipment, Xeroxing class assignments, collecting homework, and routine things like that. They thought it would be a big honor to work for Dr. Levine—or anyway, interesting to work for an actual professional scientist—so they had agreed to do it.

But it turned out there never was anything to be done for the class; Dr. Levine did all that himself. Instead, he sent them on lots of little errands. And he had told them to be careful to avoid this bearded man in the car. That wasn’t hard; the man never paid any attention to them, because they were kids.

Dr. Levine had explained the bearded man was following him because of something to do with his arrest, but Kelly didn’t believe that. Her own mother had been arrested twice for drunk driving, and there was never anybody following her. So Kelly didn’t know why this man was following Levine, but clearly Levine was doing some secret research and he didn’t want anybody to find out about it. She knew one thing—Dr. Levine didn’t care much about this class he was teaching. He usually gave the lecture off the top of his head. Other times he would walk in the front door of the school, hand them a taped lecture, and walk out the back. They never knew where he went, on those days.

The errands he sent them on were mysterious, too. Once they went to Stanford and picked up five small squares of plastic from a professor there. The plastic was light, and sort of foamy. Another time they went downtown to an electronics store and picked up a triangular device that the man behind the counter gave them very nervously, as if it might be illegal or something. Another time they picked up a metal tube that looked like it contained cigars. They couldn’t help opening it, but they were uneasy to find four sealed plastic ampoules of straw-colored liquid. The ampoules were marked EXTREME DANGER! LETHAL TOXICITY! and had the three-bladed international symbol for biohazard.

But mostly, their assignments were mundane. He often sent them to libraries at Stanford to Xerox papers on all sorts of subjects: Japanese sword-making, X-ray crystallography, Mexican vampire bats, Central American volcanoes, oceanic currents of El Niño, the mating behavior of mountain sheep, sea-cucumber toxicity, flying buttresses of Gothic cathedrals …

Dr. Levine never explained why he was interested in these subjects. Often he would send them back day after day, to search for more material. And then, suddenly, he would drop the subject, and never refer to it again. And they would be on to something else.

Of course, they could figure some of it out. A lot of the questions had to do with the vehicles that Dr. Thorne was building for Dr. Levine’s expedition. But most of the time, the subjects were completely mysterious.

Occasionally, Kelly wondered what the bearded man would make of all this. She wondered whether he knew something they did not. But actually, the bearded man seemed kind of lazy. He never seemed to figure out that Kelly and Arby were doing errands for Dr. Levine.

Right now, the bearded man glanced over at the entrance to the school, ignoring them. They walked to the end of the street, and sat on the bench to wait for the bus.

Tag

The baby snow leopard spit the bottle out, and rolled over onto its back, paws in the air. It made a soft mewing sound.

“She wants to be petted,” Elizabeth Gelman said.

Malcolm reached out his hand, to stroke the belly. The cub spun around, and sunk its tiny teeth into his fingers. Malcolm yelled.

“She does that, sometimes,” Gelman said. “Dorje! Bad girl! Is that any way to treat our distinguished visitor?” She reached out, took Malcolm’s hand. “It didn’t break the skin, but we should clean it anyway.”

They were in the white research laboratory of the San Francisco Zoo, at three o’clock in the afternoon. Elizabeth Gelman, the youthful head of research, was supposed to report on her findings, but they had to delay for the afternoon feeding in the nursery. Malcolm had watched them feed a baby gorilla, which spit up like a human baby, and a koala, and then the very cute snow-leopard cub.

“Sorry about that,” Gelman said. She took him to a side basin, and soaped his hand. “But I thought it was better that you come here now, when the regular staff is all at the weekly conference.”

“Why is that?”

“Because there’s a lot of interest in the material you gave us, Ian. A lot.” She dried his hand with a towel, inspected it again. “I think you’ll survive.”

“What have you found?” Malcolm said to her.

“You have to admit, it is very provocative. By the way, is it from Costa Rica?”

Keeping his voice neutral, Malcolm said, “Why do you say that?”

“Because there are all these rumors about unknown animals showing up in Costa Rica. And this is definitely an unknown animal, Ian.”

She led him out of the nursery, and into a small conference room. He dropped into a chair, resting his cane on the table. She lowered the lights, and clicked on a slide projector. “Okay. Here’s a close-up of your original material, before we began our examination. As you see, it consists of a fragment of animal tissue in a state of very advanced necrosis. The tissue measures four centimeters by six centimeters. Attached to it is a green plastic tag, measuring two centimeters square. Tissue cut by a knife, but not a very sharp one.”

Malcolm nodded.

“What’d you use, Ian, your pocketknife?”

“Something like that.”

“All right. Let’s deal with the tissue sample first.” The slide changed; Malcolm saw a microscopic view. “This is a gross histologic section through the superficial epidermis. Those patchy, ragged gaps are where the postmortem necrotic change has eroded the skin surface. But what is interesting is the arrangement of epidermal cells. You’ll notice the density of chromatophores, or pigment-bearing cells. In the cut section you see the difference between melanophores here, and allophores, here. The overall pattern is suggestive of a lacerta or amblyrhynchus.”

“You mean a lizard?” Malcolm said.

“Yes,” she said. “It looks like a lizard—though the picture is not entirely consistent.” She tapped the left side of the screen. “You see this one cell here, which has this slight rim, in section? We believe that’s muscle. The chromatophore could open and close. Meaning that this animal could change color, like a chameleon. And over here you see this large oval shape, with a pale center? That’s the pore of a femoral scent gland. There is a waxy substance in the center which we are still analyzing. But our presumption is that this animal was male, since only male lizards have femoral glands.”

“I see,” Malcolm said.

She changed the slide. Malcolm saw what looked like a close-up of a sponge. “Going deeper. Here we see the structure of the subcutaneous layers. Highly distorted, because of gas bubbles from the clostridia infection that bloated the animal. But you can get a sense of the vessels—see, one here—and another here—which are surrounded by smooth muscle fibers. This is not characteristic of lizards. In fact, the whole appearance of this slide is wrong for lizards, or reptiles of any sort.”

“You mean it looks warm-blooded.”

“Right,” Gelman said. “Not really mammalian, but perhaps avian. This could be, oh, I don’t know, a dead pelican. Something like that.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Except no pelican has a skin like that.”

“I see,” Malcolm said.

“And there’s no feathers.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Now,” Gelman said, “we were able to extract a minute quantity of blood from the intra-arterial spaces. Not much, but enough to conduct a microscopic examination. Here it is.”

The slide changed again. He saw a jumble of cells, mostly red cells, and an occasional misshapen white cell. It was confusing to look at.

“This isn’t my area, Elizabeth,” he said.

“Well, I’ll just give you the highlights,” she said. “First of all, nucleated red cells. That’s characteristic of birds, not mammals. Second, rather atypical hemoglobin, differing in several base pairs from other lizards. Third, aberrant white-cell structure. We don’t have enough material to make a determination, but we suspect this animal has a highly unusual immune system.”

“Whatever that means,” Malcolm said, with a shrug.

“We don’t know, and the sample doesn’t give us enough to find out. By the way, can you get more?”

“I might be able to,” he said.

“Where, from Site B?”

Malcolm looked puzzled. “Site B?”

“Well, that’s what’s embossed on the tag.” She changed the slide. “I must say, Ian, this tag is very interesting. Here at the zoo, we tag animals all the time, and we’re familiar with all the ordinary commercial brands sold around the world. Nobody’s seen this tag before. Here it is, magnified ten times. The actual object is roughly the size of your thumbnail. Uniform plastic outer surface, attaches to the animal by a Teflon-coated, stainless-steel clip on the other side. It’s a rather small clip, of the kind used to tag infants. The animal you saw was adult?”

“Presumably.”

“So the tag was probably in place for a while, ever since the animal was young,” Gelman said. “Which makes sense, considering the degree of weathering. You’ll notice the pitting on the surface. That’s very unusual. This plastic is Duralon, the stuff they use to make football helmets. It’s extremely tough, and this pitting can’t have occurred through simple wear.”

“Then what?”

“It’s almost certainly a chemical reaction, such as exposure to acid, perhaps in aerosol form.”

“Like volcanic fumes?” Malcolm said.

“That could do it, particularly in view of what else we’ve learned. You’ll notice that the tag is rather thick—actually, it’s nine millimeters across. And it’s hollow.”

“Hollow?” Malcolm said, frowning.

“Yes. It contains an inner cavity. We didn’t want to open it, so we X-rayed it. Here.” The slide changed. Malcolm saw a jumble of white lines and boxes, inside the tag.

“There appears to be substantial corrosion, again perhaps from acid fumes. But there’s no question what this once was. It’s a radio tag, Ian. Which means that this unusual animal, this warm-blooded lizard or whatever it was, was tagged and raised by somebody from birth. And that’s the part that’s got people around here upset. Somebody’s raising these things. Do you know how that happened?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Malcolm said.

Elizabeth Gelman sighed. “You’re a lying son of a bitch.”

He held out his hand. “May I have my sample back?”

She said, “Ian. After all I’ve done for you.”

“The sample?”

“I think you owe me an explanation.”

“And I promise, you’ll have one. In about two weeks. I’ll buy dinner.”

She tossed a silver-foil package on the table. He picked it up, and slipped it in his pocket. “Thanks, Liz.” He got up to go. “I hate to run, but I’ve got to make a call right away.”

He started for the door, and she said, “By the way, how did it die, Ian? This animal.”

He paused. “Why do you ask?”

“Because, when we teased up the skin cells, we found a few foreign cells under the outer epidermal layer. Cells belonging to another animal.”

“Meaning what?”

“Well, it’s the typical picture you see when two lizards fight. They rub against each other. Cells get pushed under the superficial layer.”

“Yes,” he said. “There were signs of a fight on the carcass. The animal had been wounded.”

“And you should also know there were signs of chronic vasoconstriction in the arterial vessels. This animal was under stress, Ian. And not just from the fight that wounded it. That would have disappeared in early postmortem changes. I’m talking about chronic, continuous stress. Wherever this creature lived, its environment was extremely stressful and dangerous.”

“I see.”

“So. How come a tagged animal has such a stressful life?”

At the entrance to the zoo, he looked around to see if he was being followed, then stopped at a pay phone and dialed Levine. The machine picked up; Levine wasn’t there. Typical, Malcolm thought. Whenever you needed him he wasn’t there. Probably off trying to get his Ferrari out of impound again. Malcolm hung up, and headed toward his car.

Thorne

“Thorne Mobile Field Systems” was stenciled in black lettering on a large rolling metal garage door, at the far end of the Industrial Park. There was a regular door to the left. Arby pushed the buzzer on a small box with a grille. A gruff voice said, “Go away.”

“It’s us, Dr. Thorne. Arby and Kelly.”

“Oh. Okay.”

There was a click as the door unlocked, and they walked inside. They found themselves in a large open shed. Workmen were making modifications on several vehicles; the air smelled of acetylene, engine oil, and fresh paint. Directly ahead Kelly saw a dark-green Ford Explorer with its roof cut open; two assistants stood on ladders, fitting a large flat panel of black solar cells over the top of the car. The hood of the Explorer was up, and the V-6 engine had been pulled out; workmen were now lowering a small, new engine in its place—it looked like a rounded shoebox, with the dull shine of aluminum alloy. Others were bringing the wide, flat rectangle of the Hughes converter that would be mounted on top of the motor.

Over to the right, she saw the two RV trailers that Thorne’s team had been working on for the last few weeks. They weren’t the usual trailers you saw people driving for the weekends. One was enormous and sleek, almost as big as a bus, and outfitted with living and sleeping quarters for four people, as well as all sorts of special scientific equipment. It was called “Challenger” and it had an unusual feature: once you parked it, the walls could slide outward, expanding the inside dimensions.

The Challenger trailer was made to connect up through a special accordion passageway to the second trailer, which was somewhat smaller, and was pulled by the first. This second RV contained laboratory equipment and some very high-tech refinements, though Kelly wasn’t sure exactly what. Right now, the second trailer was nearly hidden by the huge stream of sparks that spit out from a welder on the roof. Despite all the activity, the trailer looked mostly finished—although she could see people working inside, and all the upholstery, the chairs and seats, were lying around on the ground outside.

Thorne himself was standing in the middle of the room, shouting at the welder on the roof of the camper. “Come on, come on, we’ve got to be finished today! Eddie, let’s go.” He turned, shouted again, “No, no, no. Look at the plans! Henry: you can’t place that strut laterally. It has to be crosswise, for strength. Look at the plans!”

Doc Thorne was a gray-haired, barrel-chested man of fifty five. Except for his wire-frame glasses, he looked as if he might be a retired prizefighter. It was hard for Kelly to imagine Thorne as a university professor; he was immensely strong, and in continuous movement. “Damn it, Henry! Henry! Henry, are you listening to me?”

Thorne swore again, and shook his fist in the air. He turned to the kids. “These guys,” he said. “They’re supposed to be helping me.” From the Explorer, there was a white-hot crack like lightning. The two men leaning into the hood jumped away, as a cloud of acrid smoke rose above the car. “What’d I tell you?” Thorne shouted. “Ground it! Ground it before you do anything! We’ve got serious voltages here, guys! You’re going to get fried if you’re not careful!”

He looked back at the kids and shook his head. “They just don’t get it,” he said. “That IUD is serious defense.”

“IUD?”

“Internal Ursine Deterrent—that’s what Levine calls it. It’s his idea of a joke,” Thorne said. “Actually, I developed this system a few years back for park rangers in Yellowstone, where bears break into trailers. Flip a switch, and you run ten thousand volts across the outer skin of the trailer. Wham-o! Takes the fight out of the biggest bear. But that kind of voltage’ll blow these guys right off the trailer. And then what? I get a workmen’s-compensation suit. For their stupidity.” He shook his head. “So? Where’s Levine?”

“We don’t know,” Arby said.

“What do you mean? Didn’t he teach your class today?”

“No, he didn’t come.”

Thorne swore again. “Well, I need him today, to go over the final revisions, before we do our field testing. He was supposed to be back today.”

“Back from where?” Kelly said.

“Oh, he went on one of his field trips,” Thorne said. “Very excited about it, before he went. I outfitted him myself—loaned him my latest field pack. Everything he could ever want in just forty-seven pounds. He liked it. Left last Monday, four days ago.”

“For where?”

“How should I know?” Thorne said. “He wouldn’t tell me. And I gave up asking. You know they’re all the same, now. Every scientist I deal with is secretive. But you can’t blame them. They’re all afraid of being ripped off, or sued. The modern world. Last year I built equipment for an expedition to the Amazon, we waterproofed it—which you’d want in the Amazon rain forest—soaking-wet electronics just don’t work—and the principal scientist was charged with misappropriating funds. For waterproofing! Some university bureaucrat said it was an ‘unnecessary expense.’ I’m telling you, it’s insane. Just insane. Henry—did you hear anything I said to you? Put it crosswise!”

Thorne strode across the room, waving his arms. The kids followed behind him.

“But now, look at this,” Thorne said. “For months we’ve been modifying his field vehicles, and finally we’re ready. He wants them light, I build them light. He wants them strong, I build them strong—light and strong both, why not, it’s just impossible, what he’s asking for, but with enough titanium and honeycarbon composite, we’re doing it anyway. He wants it off petroleum base, and off the grid, and we do that, too. So finally he’s got what he wanted, an immensely strong portable laboratory to go where there’s no gasoline and no electricity. And now that it’s finished … I can’t believe it. He really didn’t show up for your class?”

“No,” Kelly said.

“So he’s disappeared,” Thorne said. “Wonderful. Perfect. What about our field test? We were going to take these vehicles out for a week, and put them through their paces.”

“I know,” Kelly said. “We got permission from our parents and everything, so we could go, too.”

“And now he’s not here,” Thorne fumed. “I suppose I should have expected it. These rich kids, they do whatever they want. A guy like Levine gives spoiled a bad name.”

From the ceiling, a large metal cage came crashing down, landing next to them on the floor. Thorne jumped aside. “Eddie! Damn! Will you watch it?”

“Sorry, Doc,” said Eddie Carr, high up in the rafters. “But specs are it can’t deform at twelve thousand psi. We had to test it.”

“That’s fine, Eddie. But don’t test it when we’re under it!” Thorne bent to examine the cage, which was circular, constructed of inch-thick titanium-alloy bars. It had survived the fall without harm. And it was light; Thorne lifted it upright with one hand. It was about six feet high and four feet in diameter. It looked like an oversized bird cage. It had a swinging door, fitted with a heavy lock.

“What’s that for?” Arby asked.

“Actually,” Thorne said, “it’s part of that.” He pointed across the room, where a workman was putting together a stack of telescoping aluminum struts. “High observation plat form, made to be assembled in the field. Scaffolding sets up into a rigid structure, about fifteen feet high. Fitted with a little shelter on top. Also collapsible.”

“A platform to observe what?” Arby said.

Thorne said, “He didn’t tell you?”

“No,” Kelly said.

“No,” Arby said.

“Well, he didn’t tell me, either,” Thorne said, shaking his head. “All I know is he wants everything immensely strong. Light and strong, light and strong. Impossible.” He sighed. “God save me from academics.”

“I thought you were an academic,” Kelly said.

“Former academic,” Thorne said briskly. “Now I actually make things. I don’t just talk.”

Colleagues who knew Jack Thorne agreed that retirement marked the happiest period in his life. As a professor of applied engineering, and a specialist in exotic materials, he had always demonstrated a practical focus and a love of students. His most famous course at Stanford, Structural Engineering 101a, was known among the students as “Thorny Problems,” because Thorne continually provoked his class to solve applied-engineering challenges he set for them. Some of these had long since entered into student folklore. There was, for example, the Toilet Paper Disaster: Thorne asked the students to drop a carton of eggs from Hoover Tower without injury. As padding, they could only use the cardboard tubes at the center of toilet paper rolls. There were spattered eggs all over the plaza below.

Then, another year, Thorne asked the students to build a chair to support a two-hundred-pound man, using only paper Q-tips and thread. And another time, he hung the answer sheet for the final exam from the classroom ceiling, and invited his students to pull it down, using whatever they could make with a cardboard shoebox containing a pound of licorice, and some toothpicks.

When he was not in class, Thorne often served as an expert witness in legal cases involving materials engineering. He specialized in explosions, crashed airplanes, collapsed buildings, and other disasters. These forays into the real world sharpened his view that scientists needed the widest possible education. He used to say, “How can you design for people if you don’t know history and psychology? You can’t. Because your mathematical formulas may be perfect, but the people will screw it up. And if that happens, it means you screwed it up.” He peppered his lectures with quotations from Plato, Chaka Zulu, Emerson, and Chang-tzu.

But as a professor who was popular with his students—and who advocated general education—Thorne found himself swimming against the tide. The academic world was marching toward ever more specialized knowledge, expressed in ever more dense jargon. In this climate, being liked by your students was a sign of shallowness; and interest in real-world problems was proof of intellectual poverty and a distressing indifference to theory. But in the end, it was his fondness for Chang-tzu that pushed him out the door. In a departmental meeting, one of his colleagues got up and announced that “Some mythical Chinese bullshitter means fuck-all for engineering.”

Thorne took early retirement a month later, and soon after started his own company. He enjoyed his work thoroughly, but he missed contact with the students, which was why he liked Levine’s two youthful assistants. These kids were smart, they were enthusiastic, and they were young enough so that the schools hadn’t destroyed all their interest in learning. They could still actually use their brains, which in Thorne’s view was a sure sign they hadn’t yet completed a formal education.

“Jerry!” Thorne bellowed, to one of the welders on the RVs. “Balance the struts on both sides! Remember the crash tests!” Thorne pointed to a video monitor set on the floor, which showed a computer image of the RV crashing into a barrier. First it crashed end-on, then it crashed sideways, then it rolled and crashed again. Each time, the vehicle survived with very little damage. The computer program had been developed by the auto companies, and then discarded. Thorne acquired it, and modified it. “Of course the auto companies discarded it—it’s a good idea. Don’t want any good ideas coming out of a big company. Might lead to a good product!” He sighed. “Using this computer, we’ve crashed these vehicles ten thousand times: designing, crashing, modifying, crashing again. No theories, just actual testing. The way it ought to be.”

Thorne’s dislike of theory was legendary. In his view, a theory was nothing more than a substitute for experience put forth by someone who didn’t know what he was talking about. “And now look. Jerry? Jerry! Why’d we do all these simulations, if you guys aren’t going to follow the plans? Is everybody brain-dead around here?”

“Sorry, Doc …”

“Don’t be sorry! Be right!”

“Well, we’re massively overbuilt anyway—”

“Oh? Is that your decision? You’re the designer now? Just follow the plans!”

Arby trotted alongside Thorne. “I’m worried about Dr. Levine,” he said.

“Really? I’m not.”

“But he’s always been reliable. And very well organized.”

“That’s true,” Thorne said. “He’s also completely impulsive and does whatever he feels like.”

“Maybe so,” Arby said, “but I don’t think he’d be missing without a good reason. I’m afraid he might be in trouble. Only last week, he had us go with him to visit Professor Malcolm in Berkeley, who had this map of the world in his office, and it showed—”

“Malcolm!” Thorne snorted. “Spare me! Peas in a pod, those two. Each more impractical than the other. But I’d better get hold of Levine now.” He turned on his heel, and walked toward his office.

Arby said, “You going to use the satphone?”

Thorne paused. “The what?”

“The satphone,” Arby said. “Didn’t Dr. Levine take a satphone with him?”

“How could he?” Thorne said. “You know the smallest satellite phones are the size of a suitcase.”

“Yeah, but they don’t have to be,” Arby said. “You could have made one very small.”

“Could I? How?” Despite himself, Thorne was amused by this kid. You had to like him.

“With that VLSI com board that we picked up,” Arby said. “The triangular one. It had two Motorola BSN-23 chip arrays, and they’re restricted technology developed for the CIA because they allow you to make a—”

“Hey, hey,” Thorne said, interrupting him. “Where did you learn all this? I’ve warned you about hacking systems—”

“Don’t worry, I’m careful,” Arby said. “But it’s true about the com board, isn’t it? You could use it to make a one-pound satphone. So: did you?”

Thorne stared at him for a long time.

“Maybe,” he said finally. “What of it?”

Arby grinned. “Cool,” he said.

Thorne’s small office was located in a corner of the shed. Inside, the walls were plastered with blueprints, order forms on clipboards, and three-dimensional cutaway computer drawings. Electronic components, equipment catalogs, and stacks of faxes were scattered across his desk. Thorne rummaged through them, and finally came up with a small gray handheld telephone. “Here we are.” He held it up for Arby to see. “Pretty good, huh? Designed it myself.”

Kelly said, “It looks just like a cellular phone.”

“Yes, but it’s not. A cellular phone uses a grid in place. A satellite phone links directly to communication satellites in space. With one of these I can talk anywhere in the world.” He dialed swiftly. “Used to be, they needed a three-foot dish. Then it was a one-foot dish. Now no dish at all—just the handset. Not bad, if I say so myself. Let’s see if he’s answering.” He pushed the speakerphone. They heard the call dial through, hissing static.

“Knowing Richard,” Thorne said, “he probably just missed his plane, or forgot that he was supposed to be back here today for final approvals. And we’re pretty much finished here. When you see we’re down to the exterior struts and the upholstery, the fact is, we’re done. He’s going to hold us up. It’s very inconsiderate of him.” The phone rang, repeated electronic beeps. “If I can’t get through to him, I’ll try Sarah Harding.”

“Sarah Harding?” Kelly asked, looking up.

Arby said, “Who’s Sarah Harding?”

“Only the most famous young animal behaviorist in the world, Arb.” Sarah Harding was one of Kelly’s personal heroes. Kelly had read every article she could about her. Sarah Harding had been a poor scholarship student at the University of Chicago but now, at thirty-three, she was an assistant professor at Princeton. She was beautiful and independent, a rebel, who went her own way. She had chosen the life of a scientist in the field, living alone in Africa, where she studied lions and hyenas. She was famously tough. Once, when her Land Rover broke down, she walked twenty miles across the savannah all by herself, driving away lions by throwing rocks at them.

In photographs, Sarah was usually posed in shorts and a khaki shirt, with binoculars around her neck, next to a Land Rover. With her short, dark hair and her strong, muscular body, she looked rugged but glamorous at the same time. At least, that was how she appeared to Kelly, who always studied the pictures intently, taking in every detail.

“Never heard of her,” Arby said.

Thorne said, “Spending too much time with computers, Arby?”

Arby said, “No.” Kelly saw Arby’s shoulders hunch, and he sort of withdrew into himself, the way he always did when he felt criticized. Sulky, he said, “Animal behaviorist?”

“That’s right,” Thorne said. “I know Levine’s talked to her several times in the last few weeks. She’s helping him with all this equipment, when it finally goes into the field. Or advising him. Or something. Or maybe the connection is with Malcolm. After all, she was in love with Malcolm.”

“I don’t believe it,” Kelly said. “Maybe he was in love with her.…”

Thorne looked at her. “You’ve met her?”

“No. But I know about her.”

“I see.” Thorne said no more. He could see all the signs of hero worship, and he approved. A girl could do worse than admire Sarah Harding. At least she wasn’t an athlete or a rock star. In fact, it was refreshing for a kid to admire somebody who actually tried to advance knowledge.…

The phone continued to ring. There was no answer.

“Well, we know Levine’s equipment is in order,” Thorne said. “Because the call is going through. We know that much.”

Arby said, “Can you trace it?”

“Unfortunately, no. And if we keep this up, we’ll probably drain the field battery, which means—”

There was a click, and they heard a man’s voice, remarkably distinct and clear: “Levine.”

“Okay. Good. He’s there,” Thorne said, nodding. He pushed the button on his handset. “Richard? It’s Doc Thorne.”

Over the speakerphone, they heard a sustained static hiss. Then a cough, and a scratchy voice said: “Hello? Hello? It’s Levine here.”

Thorne pressed the button on his phone. “Richard. It’s Thorne. Do you read me?”

“Hello?” Levine said, at the other end. “Hello?”

Thorne sighed. “Richard. You have to press the ‘T’ button, for transmit. Over.”

“Hello?” Another cough, deep and rasping. “This is Levine. Hello?”

Thorne shook his head in disgust. “Obviously, he doesn’t know how to work it. Damn! I went over it very carefully with him. Of course he wasn’t paying attention. Geniuses never pay attention. They think they know everything. These things aren’t toys.” He pushed the send button. “Richard, listen to me. You must push the ‘T’ in order to—”

“This is Levine. Hello? Levine. Please. I need help.” A kind of groan. “If you can hear me, send help. Listen, I’m on the island, I managed to get here all right, but—”

A crackle. A hiss.

“Uh-oh,” Thorne said.

“What is it?” Arby said, leaning forward.

“We’re losing him.”

“Why?”

“Battery,” Thorne said. “It’s going fast. Damn. Richard: where are you?”

Over the speakerphone, they heard Levine’s voice: “—dead already—situation got—now—very serious—don’t know—can hear me, but if you—get help—”

“Richard. Tell us where you are!”

The phone hissed, the transmission getting steadily worse. They heard Levine say: “—have me surrounded, and—vicious—can smell them especially—night—”

“What is he talking about?” Arby said.

“—to—injury—can’t—not long—please—”

And then there was a final, fading hiss.

And suddenly the phone went dead.

Thorne clicked off his own handset, and turned off the speakerphone. He turned to the kids, who were both pale. “We have to find him,” he said. “Right away.”

SECOND CONFIGURATION

“Self-organization elaborates in complexity as the system advances toward the chaotic edge.”

IAN MALCOLM

Clues

Thorne unlocked the door to Levine’s apartment, and flicked on the lights. They stared, astonished. Arby said, “It looks like a museum!”

Levine’s two-bedroom apartment was decorated in a vaguely Asian style, with rich wooden cabinets, and expensive antiques. But the apartment was spotlessly clean, and most of the antiques were housed in plastic cases. Everything was neatly labeled. They walked slowly into the room.

“Does he live here?” Kelly said. She found it hard to believe. The apartment seemed so impersonal to her, almost inhuman. And her own apartment was such a mess all the time.…

“Yeah, he does,” Thorne said, pocketing the key. “It always looks like this. It’s why he can never live with a woman. He can’t stand to have anybody touch anything.”

The living-room couches were arranged around a glass coffee table. On the table were four piles of books, each neatly aligned with the glass edge. Arby glanced at the titles. Catastrophe Theory and Emergent Structures. Inductive Processes in Molecular Evolution. Cellular Automata. Methodology of Non-Linear Adaptation. Phase Transition in Evolutionary Systems. There were also some older books, with titles in German.

Kelly sniffed the air. “Something cooking?”

“I don’t know,” Thorne said. He went into the dining room. Along the wall, he saw a hot plate with a row of covered dishes. They saw a polished wood dining table, with a place set for one, silver and cut glass. Soup steamed from a bowl.

Thorne walked over and picked up a sheet of paper on the table and read: “Lobster bisque, baby organic greens, seared ahi tuna.” A yellow Post-it was attached. “Hope your trip was good! Romelia.”

“Wow,” Kelly said. “You mean somebody makes dinner for him every day?”

“I guess,” Thorne said. He didn’t seem impressed; he shuffled through a stack of unopened mail that had been set out beside the plate. Kelly turned to some faxes on a nearby table. The first one was from the Peabody Museum at Yale, in New Haven. “Is this German?” she said, handing it to Thorne.

Dear Dr. Levine:

Your requested document:

“Geschichtliche Forschungsarbeiten über die Geologie Zentralamerikas, 1922–1929”

has been sent by Federal Express today.

Thank you.

(signed)

Dina Skrumbis, Archivist

“I can’t read it,” Thorne said. “But I think it’s ‘Something Researches on the Geology of Central America.’ And it’s from the twenties—not exactly hot news.”

“I wonder why he wanted it?” she said.

Thorne didn’t answer her. He went into the bedroom.

The bedroom had a spare, minimal look, the bed a black futon, neatly made. Thorne opened the closet doors, and saw racks of clothing, everything pressed, neatly spaced, much of it in plastic. He opened the top dresser drawer and saw socks folded, arranged by color.

“I don’t know how he can live like this,” Kelly said.

“Nothing to it,” Thorne said. “All you need is servants.” He opened the other drawers quickly, one after another.

Kelly wandered over to the bedside table. There were several books there. The one on top was very small, and yellowing with age. It was in German; the title was Die Fünf Todesarten. She flipped through it, saw colored pictures of what looked like Aztecs in colorful costumes. It was almost like an illustrated children’s book, she thought.

Underneath were books and journal articles with the dark-red cover of the Santa Fe Institute: Genetic Algorithms and Heuristic Networks. Geology of Central America, Tessellation Automata of Arbitrary Dimension. The 1989 Annual Report of the InGen Corporation. And next to the telephone, she noticed a sheet of hastily scribbled notes. She recognized the precise handwriting as Levine’s.

It said:

“SITE B”

Vulkanische

Tacaño?

Nublar?

1 of 5 Deaths?

in mtns? No!!!

maybe Guitierrez

careful

Kelly said, “What’s Site B? He has notes about it.”

Thorne came over to look. “Vulkanische,” he said. “That means ‘volcanic,’ I think. And Tacaño and Nublar … They sound like place names. If they are, we can check that on an atlas.…”

“And what’s this about one of five deaths?” Kelly said.

“Damned if I know,” he said.

They were staring at the paper when Arby walked into the bedroom and said, “What’s Site B?”

Thorne looked up. “Why?”

“You better see his office,” Arby said.

Levine had turned the second bedroom into an office. It was, like the rest of the apartment, admirably neat. There was a desk with papers laid out in tidy stacks alongside a computer, covered in plastic. But behind the desk there was a large corkboard that covered most of the wall. And on this board, Levine had tacked up maps, charts, newspaper clippings, Landsat images, and aerial photographs. At the top of the board was a large sign that said “Site B?”

Alongside that was a blurred, curling snapshot of a bespectacled Chinese man in a white lab coat, standing in the jungle beside a wooden sign that said “Site B.” His coat was unbuttoned, and he was wearing a tee shirt with lettering on it.

Alongside the photo was a large blowup of the tee shirt, as seen in the original photograph. It was hard to read the lettering, which was partly covered on both sides by the lab coat, but the shirt seemed to say:

nGen Site B
esearch Facili

In neat handwriting, Levine had noted: “InGen Site B Research Facility???? WHERE???”

Just below that was a page cut from the InGen Annual Report. A circled paragraph read:

In addition to its headquarters in Palo Alto, where InGen maintains an ultra-modern 200,000 square foot research laboratory, the company runs three field laboratories around the world. A geological lab in South Africa, where amber and other biological specimens are acquired; a research farm in the mountains of Costa Rica, where exotic varieties of plants are grown; and a facility on the island of Isla Nublar, 120 miles west of Costa Rica.

Next to that Levine had written: “No B! Liars!”

Arby said, “He’s really obsessed with Site B.”

“I’ll say,” Thorne said. “And he thinks it’s on an island somewhere.”

Peering closely at the board, Thorne looked at the satellite images. He noticed that although they were printed in false colors, at various degrees of magnification, they all seemed to show the same general geographical area: a rocky coastline, and some islands offshore. The coastline had a beach, and encroaching jungle; it might be Costa Rica, but it was impossible to say for sure. In truth, it could be any of a dozen places in the world.

“He said he was on an island,” Kelly said.

“Yes.” Thorne shrugged. “But that doesn’t help us much.” He stared at the board. “There must be twenty islands here, maybe more.”

Thorne looked at a memo, near the bottom.

SITE B @#$#TO ALL DEPARTMENTS OF[]****

MINDER OF%$#@#!PRESS AVOIDAN******

Mr. Hammond wishes to remind all***after^&^marketing %**Long-term marketing plan&^&^%

Marketing of proposed resort facilities requires that full complexity of JP technology not be revealed announced made known. Mr. Hammond wishes to remind all departments that Production facility will not be topie subject of any press release or discussion at any time.

Production/manufacturing facility cannot be#@#$# reference to production island loc

Isla S. inhouse reference only strict press***^%$**guidelines

“This is weird,” he said. “What do you make of this?”

Arby came over, and looked at it thoughtfully.

“All these missing letters and garbage,” Thorne said. “Does it make any sense to you?”

“Yes,” Arby said. He snapped his fingers, and went directly to Levine’s desk. There, he pulled the plastic cover off the computer, and said, “I thought so.”

The computer on Levine’s desk was not the modern machine that Thorne would have expected. This computer was several years old, large and bulky, its cover scratched in many places. It had a black stripe on the box that said “Design Associates, Inc.” And lower down, right by the power switch, a shiny little metal tag that said “Property International Genetics Technology, Inc., Palo Alto, CA.”

“What’s this?” Thorne said. “Levine has an InGen computer?”

“Yes,” Arby said. “He sent us to buy it last week. They were selling off computer equipment.”

“And he sent you?” Thorne said.

“Yeah. Me and Kelly. He didn’t want to go himself. He’s afraid of being followed.”

“But this thing’s a CAD-CAM machine, and it must be five years old,” Thorne said. CAD-CAM computers were used by architects, graphic artists, and mechanical engineers. “Why would Levine want it?”

“He never told us,” Arby said, flipping on the power switch. “But I know now.”

“Yes?”

“That memo,” Arby said, nodding to the wall. “You know why it looks that way? It’s a recovered computer file. Levine’s been recovering InGen files from this machine.”

As Arby explained it, all the computers that InGen sold that day had had their hard drives reformatted to destroy any sensitive data on the disks. But the CAD-CAM machines were an exception. These machines all had special software installed by the manufacturer. The software was keyed to individual machines, using individual code references. That made these computers awkward to reformat, because the software would have to be reinstalled individually, taking hours.

“So they didn’t do it,” Thorne said.

“Right,” Arby said. “They just erased the directory, and sold them.”

“And that means the original files are still on the disk.”

“Right.”

The monitor glowed. The screen said:

TOTAL RECOVERED FILES: 2,387

“Jeez,” Arby said. He leaned forward, staring intently, fingers poised over the keys. He pushed the directory button, and row after row of file names scrolled down. Thousands of files in all.

Thorne said, “How are you going to—”

“Give me a minute here,” Arby said, interrupting him. Then he began to type rapidly.

“Okay, Arb,” Thorne said. He was amused by the imperious way Arby behaved whenever he was working with a computer. He seemed to forget how young he was, his usual diffidence and timidity vanished. The electronic world was really his element. And he knew he was good at it.

Thorne said, “Any help you can give us will be—”

“Doc,” Arby said. “Come on. Go and, uh, I don’t know. Help Kelly or something.”

And he turned away, and typed.

Raptor

The velociraptor was six feet tall and dark green. Poised to attack, it hissed loudly, its muscular neck thrust forward, jaws wide. Tim, one of the modelers, said, “What do you think, Dr. Malcolm?”

“No menace,” Malcolm said, walking by. He was in the back wing of the biology department, on his way to his office.

“No menace?” Tim said.

“They never stand like this, flatfooted on two feet. Give him a book”—he grabbed a notebook from a desk, and placed it in the forearms of the animal—“and he might be singing a Christmas carol.”

“Gee,” Tim said. “I didn’t think it was that bad.”

“Bad?” Malcolm said. “This is an insult to a great predator. We should feel his speed and menace and power. Widen the jaws. Get the neck down. Tense the muscles, tighten the skin. And get that leg up. Remember, raptors don’t attack with their jaws—they use their toe-claws,” Malcolm said. “I want to see the claw raised up, ready to slash down and tear the guts out of its prey.”

“You really think so?” Tim said doubtfully. “It might scare little kids.…”

“You mean it might scare you.” Malcolm continued down the hallway. “And another thing: change that hissing sound. It sounds like somebody taking a pee. Give this animal a snarl. Give a great predator his due.”

“Gee,” Tim said, “I didn’t know you had such personal feelings about it.”

“It should be accurate,” Malcolm said. “You know, there is such a thing as accurate and inaccurate. Irrespective of whatever your feelings are.” He walked on, irritable, ignoring the momentary pain in his leg. The modeler annoyed him, although he had to admit Tim was just a representative of the current, fuzzy-minded thinking—what Malcolm called “sappy science.”

Malcolm had long been impatient with the arrogance of his scientific colleagues. They maintained that arrogance, he knew, by resolutely ignoring the history of science as a way of thought. Scientists pretended that history didn’t matter, because the errors of the past were now corrected by modern discoveries. But of course their forebears had believed exactly the same thing in the past, too. They had been wrong then. And modern scientists were wrong now. No episode of science history proved it better than the way dinosaurs had been portrayed over the decades.

It was sobering to realize that the most accurate perception of dinosaurs had also been the first. Back in the 1840s, when Richard Owen first described giant bones in England, he named them Dinosauria: terrible lizards. That was still the most accurate description of these creatures, Malcolm thought. They were indeed like lizards, and they were terrible.

But since Owen, the “scientific” view of dinosaurs had undergone many changes. Because the Victorians believed in the inevitability of progress, they insisted that the dinosaurs must necessarily be inferior—why else would they be extinct? So the Victorians made them fat, lethargic, and dumb—big dopes from the past. This perception was elaborated, so that by the early twentieth century, dinosaurs had become so weak that they could not support their own weight. Apatosaurs had to stand belly-deep in water or they would crush their own legs. The whole conception of the ancient world was suffused with these ideas of weak, stupid, slow animals.

That view didn’t change until the 1960s, when a few renegade scientists, led by John Ostrom, began to imagine quick, agile, hot-blooded dinosaurs. Because these scientists had the temerity to question dogma, they were brutally criticized for years, even though it now seemed their ideas were correct.

But in the last decade, a growing interest in social behavior had led to still another view. Dinosaurs were now seen as caring creatures, living in groups, raising their little babies. They were good animals, even cute animals. The big sweeties had nothing to do with their terrible fate, which was visited on them by Alvarez’s meteor. And that new sappy view produced people like Tim, who were reluctant to look at the other side of the coin, the other face of life. Of course, some dinosaurs had been social and cooperative. But others had been hunters—and killers of unparalleled viciousness. For Malcolm, the truest picture of life in the past incorporated the interplay of all aspects of life, the good and the bad, the strong and the weak. It was no good pretending anything else.

Scaring little kids, indeed! Malcolm snorted irritably, as he walked down the hall.

In truth, Malcolm was bothered by what Elizabeth Gelman had told him about the tissue fragment, and especially the tag. That tag meant trouble, Malcolm was sure of it.

But he wasn’t sure what to do about it.

He turned the corner, past the display of Clovis points, arrowheads made by early man in America. Up ahead, he saw his office. Beverly, his assistant, was standing behind her desk, tidying papers, getting ready to go home. She handed him his faxes and said, “I’ve left word for Dr. Levine at his office, but he hasn’t called back. They don’t seem to know where he is.”

“For a change,” Malcolm said, sighing. It was so difficult working with Levine; he was so erratic, you never knew what to expect. Malcolm had been the one to post bail when Levine was arrested in his Ferrari. He riffled through the faxes: conference dates, requests for reprints … nothing interesting. “Okay. Thanks, Beverly.”

“Oh. And the photographers came. They finished about an hour ago.”

“What photographers?” he said.

“From Chaos Quarterly. To photograph your office.”

“What are you talking about?” Malcolm said.

“They came to photograph your office,” she said. “For a series about workplaces of famous mathematicians. They had a letter from you, saying it was—”

“I never sent any letter,” Malcolm said. “And I’ve never heard of Chaos Quarterly.”

He went into his office and looked around. Beverly hurried in after him, her face worried.

“Is it okay? Is everything here?”

“Yes,” he said, scanning quickly. “It seems to be fine.” He was opening the drawers to his desk, one after another. Nothing appeared to be missing.

“That’s a relief,” Beverly said, “because—”

He turned, and looked at the far side of the room.

The map.

Malcolm had a large map of the world, with pins stuck in it for all the sightings of what Levine kept calling “aberrant forms.” By the most liberal count—Levine’s count—there had now been twelve in all, from Rangiroa in the west, to Baja California and Ecuador in the east. Few of them were verified. But now there was a tissue sample that confirmed one specimen, and that made all the rest more likely.

“Did they photograph this map?”

“Yes, they photographed everything. Does it matter?”

Malcolm looked at the map, trying to see it with fresh eyes. To see what an outsider would make of it. He and Levine had spent hours in front of this map, considering the possibility of a “lost world,” trying to decide where it might be. They had narrowed it down to five islands in a chain, off the coast of Costa Rica. Levine was convinced that it was one of those islands, and Malcolm was beginning to think he was right. But those islands weren’t highlighted on the map.…

Beverly said, “They were a very nice group. Very polite. Foreign—Swiss, I think.”

Malcolm nodded, and sighed. The hell with it, he thought. It was bound to get out sooner or later.

“It’s all right, Beverly.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, it’s fine. Have a good evening.”

“Good night, Dr. Malcolm.”

Alone in his office, he dialed Levine. The phone rang, and then the answering machine beeped. Levine was still not home.

“Richard, are you there? If you are, pick up, it’s important.”

He waited, nothing happened.

“Richard, it’s Ian. Listen, we have a problem. The map is no longer secure. And I’ve had that sample analyzed, Richard, and I think it tells us the location of Site B, if my—”

There was a click as the phone lifted. He heard the sound of breathing.

“Richard?” he said.

“No,” said the voice, “this is Thorne. And I think you better get over here right away.”

The Five Deaths

“I knew it,” Malcolm said, coming into Levine’s apartment, and glancing quickly around. “I knew he would do something like this. You know how impetuous he is. I said to him, don’t go until we have all the information. But I should have known. Of course, he went.”

“Yes, he did.”

“Ego,” Malcolm said, shaking his head. “Richard has to be first. Has to figure it out first, has to get there first. I’m very concerned, he could ruin everything. This impulsive behavior: you realize it’s a storm in the brain, neurons on the edge of chaos. Obsession is just a variety of addiction. But what scientist ever had self-control? They instruct them in school: it’s bad form to be balanced. They forget Neils Bohr was not only a great physicist but an Olympic athlete. These days they all try to be nerds. It’s the professional style.”

Thorne looked at Malcolm thoughtfully. He thought he detected a competitive edge. He said, “Do you know which island he went to?”

“No. I do not.” Malcolm was stalking around the apartment, taking things in. “The last time we talked, we had narrowed it down to five islands, all in the south. But we hadn’t decided which one.”

Thorne pointed to the wallboard, the satellite images. “These islands here?”

“Yes,” Malcolm said, looking briefly. “They’re strung out in an arc, all about ten miles offshore from the bay of Puerto Cortés. Supposedly they’re all uninhabited. Local people call them the Five Deaths.”

“Why?” Kelly said.

“Some old Indian story,” Malcolm said. “Something about a brave warrior captured by a king who offered him his choice of deaths. Burning, drowning, crushing, hanging, decapitation. The warrior said he would take them all, and he went from island to island, experiencing the various challenges. Sort of a New World version of the labors of Hercules—”

“So that’s what it is!” Kelly said, and ran out of the room.

Malcolm looked blank.

He turned to Thorne, who shrugged.

Kelly returned, carrying the German children’s book in her hand. She gave it to Malcolm.

“Yes,” he said. “Die Fünf Todesarten. The Five Ways of Death. Interesting that it is in German.…”

“He has lots of German books,” Kelly said.

“Does he? That bastard. He never told me.”

“That means something?” Kelly said.

“Yes, it means a lot. Hand me that magnifying glass, would you?”

Kelly gave him a magnifying glass from the desk. “What does it mean?”

“The Five Deaths are ancient volcanic islands,” he said. “Which means that they are geologically very rich. Back in the twenties, the Germans wanted to mine them.” He peered at the images, squinting. “Ah. Yes, these are the islands, no question. Matanceros, Muerte, Tacaño, Sorna, Pena … All names of death and destruction … All right. I think we may be close. Do we have any satellite pictures with spectrographic analyses of the cloud cover?”

Arby said, “Is that going to help you find Site B?”

“What?” Malcolm spun around. “What do you know about Site B?”

Arby was sitting at the computer, still working. “Nothing. Just that Dr. Levine was looking for Site B. And it was the name in the files.”

“What files?”

“I’ve recovered some InGen files from this computer. And, searching through old records, I found references to Site B.… But they’re pretty confusing. Like this one.” He leaned back, to let Malcolm look at the screen.

Summary: Plan Revisions #35

PRODUCTION	(SITE B)
AIR HANDLERS	Grade 5 to Grade 7
LAB STRUCTURE	400 cmm to 510 cmm
BIO SECURITY	Level PK/3 to Level PK/5
CONVEYOR RATES	3 mpm to 2.5 mpm
HOLDING PENS	13 hectares to 26 hectares
STAFF Q	17 (4 admin) to 19 (4 admin)
COMM PROTOCOL	ET(VX) to RDT (VX)

Malcolm frowned. “Curious, but not very helpful. It doesn’t tell us which island—or even if it’s on an island at all. What else have you got?”

“Well …” Arby flicked keys. “Let’s see. There’s this.”

SITE B ISLAND NETWORK	NODAL POINTS
ZONE 1 (RIVER)	1–8
ZONE 2 (COAST)	9–16
ZONE 3 (RIDGE)	17–24
ZONE 4 (VALLEY)	25–32

Malcolm said, “Okay, so it’s an island. And Site B has a network—but a network of what? Computers?”

Arby said, “I don’t know. Maybe a radio network.”

“For what purpose?” Malcolm said. “What would a radio network be used for? This isn’t very helpful.”

Arby shrugged. He took it as a challenge. He began typing furiously again. Then said, “Wait!… Here’s another one … if I can just format it.… There! Got it!”

He moved away from the screen, so the others could see.

Malcolm looked and said, “Very good. Very good!”

SITE B LEGENDS

EAST WING
LABORATORY
OUTLYING
CONVENIENCE STORE
GAS STATION
MGRS HOUSE
SECURITY ONE
RIVER DOCK
SWAMP ROAD
MTN VIEW ROAD
WEST WING
ASSEMBLY BAY
MAIN CORE
WORKER VILLAGE
POOL/TENNIS
JOG PATH
SECURITY TWO
BOATHOUSE
RIVER ROAD
CLIFF ROAD
LOADING BAY
ENTRANCE
GEO TURBINE
GEO CORE
PUTTING GREENS
GAS LINES
THERMAL LINES
SOLAR ONE
RIDGE ROAD
HOLDING PENS

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Malcolm said, scanning the listing. “Can you print this out?”

“Sure.” Arby was beaming. “Is it really good?”

“It really is,” Malcolm said.

Kelly looked at Arby and said, “Arb. Those’re the text labels that go with a map.”

“Yeah, I think so. Pretty neat, huh?” He pushed a button, sending the image to the printer.

Malcolm peered at the listing some more, then turned his attention back to the satellite maps, looking closely at each one with the magnifying glass. His nose was just inches from the photographs.

“Arb,” Kelly said, “don’t just sit there. Come on! Recover the map! That’s what we need!”

“I don’t know if I can,” Arby said. “It’s a proprietary thirty-two-bit format.… I mean, it’s a big job.”

“Stop whining, Arb. Just do it.”

“Never mind,” Malcolm said. He stepped away from the satellite images pinned on the wall. “It’s not important.”

“It’s not?” Arby said, a little wounded.

“No, Arby. You can stop. Because, from what you’ve already discovered, I am quite certain we can identify the island, right now.”

James

Ed James yawned, and pushed the earpiece tighter into his ear. He wanted to make sure he got all this. He shifted in the driver’s seat of his gray Taurus, trying to get comfortable, trying to stay awake. The small tape recorder was spinning in his lap, next to his notepad, and the crumpled papers from two Big Macs. James looked across the street at Levine’s apartment building. The lights were on in the third-floor apartment.

And the bug he had placed there last week was working fine. Through his earpiece, he heard one of the kids say, “How?”

And then the crippled guy, Malcolm, said, “The essence of verification is multiple lines of reasoning that converge at a single point.”

“Meaning what?” the kid said.

Malcolm said, “Just look at the Landsat pictures.”

On his notepad, James wrote LANDSAT.

“We already looked at those,” the girl said.

James felt foolish not to have realized earlier that these two kids were working for Levine. He remembered them well, they were in the class Levine taught. There was a short black kid and a gawky white girl. Just kids: maybe eleven or twelve. He should have realized.

Not that it mattered now, he thought. He was getting the information anyway. James reached across the dashboard and plucked out the last two French fries, and ate them, even though they were cold.

“Okay,” he heard Malcolm say. “It’s this island here. This is the island Levine went to.”

The girl said doubtfully, “You think so? This is … Isla Sorna.”

James wrote ISLA SORNA.

“That’s our island,” Malcolm said. “Why? Three independent reasons. First, it’s privately owned, so it hasn’t been thoroughly searched by the Costa Rican government. Second, privately owned by whom? By the Germans, who leased rights to mineral excavations, back in the twenties.”

“All the German books!”

“Exactly. Third, from Arby’s list—and from another independent source—it is clear that there is volcanic gas located at Site B. So, which islands have volcanic gas? Take the magnifying glass and look for yourself. Turns out, only one island does.”

“You mean this here?” the girl said.

“Right. That’s volcanic smoke.”

“How do you know?”

“Spectrographic analysis. See this spike here? That’s elementary sulfur in the cloud cover. There aren’t really any sources for sulfur except volcanic sources.”

“What’s this other spike?” the girl said.

“Methane,” Malcolm said. “Apparently there is a fairly large source of methane gas.”

“Is that also volcanic?” Thorne said.

“It might be. Methane is released from volcanic activity, but most commonly during active eruptions. The other possibility is, it might be organic.”

“Organic? Meaning what?”

“Large herbivores, and—”

Then there was something that James couldn’t hear, and the kid said, “Do you want me to finish this recovery, or not?” He sounded annoyed.

“No,” Thorne said. “Never mind now, Arby. We know what we have to do. Let’s go, kids!”

James looked up at the apartment and saw the lights being turned off. A few minutes later, Thorne and the kids appeared at the front entrance, on the street level. They got in a Jeep, and drove off. Malcolm went to his own car, climbed in awkwardly, and drove away in the opposite direction.

James considered following Malcolm, but he had something else to do now. He turned on the car ignition, picked up the phone, and dialed.

Field Systems

Half an hour later, when they got back to Thorne’s office, Kelly stared, stunned. Most of the workers were gone, and the shed had been cleaned up. The two trailers and the Explorer stood side by side, freshly painted dark green, and ready to go.

“They’re finished!”

“I told you they would be,” Thorne said. He turned to his chief foreman, Eddie Carr, a stocky young man in his twenties. “Eddie, where are we?”

“Just wrapping up, Doc,” Eddie said. “Paint’s still wet in a few places, but it should be dry by morning.”

“We can’t wait until morning. We’re moving out now.”

“We are?”

Arby and Kelly exchanged glances. This was news to them, too.

Thorne said, “I’ll need you to drive one of these, Eddie. We’ve got to be at the airport by midnight.”

“But I thought we were field testing.…”

“No time for that. We’re going right to the location.” The front door buzzed. “That’ll be Malcolm, probably.” He pushed the button to unlock the door.

“You’re not going to field test?” Eddie said, with a worried look. “I think you better shake them down, Doc. We made some pretty complex modifications here, and—”

“There’s no time,” Malcolm said, coming in. “We have to go right away.” He turned to Thorne. “I’m very worried about him.”

“Eddie!” Thorne said. “Did the exit papers come in?”

“Oh sure, we’ve had them for the last two weeks.”

“Well, get them, and call Jenkins, tell him to meet us at the airport, and do the details for us. I want to be off the ground in four hours.”

“Jeez, Doc—”

“Just do it.”

Kelly said, “You’re going to Costa Rica?”

“That’s right. We’ve got to get Levine. If it’s not too late.”

“We’re coming with you,” Kelly said.

“Right,” Arby said. “We are.”

“Absolutely not,” Thorne said. “It’s out of the question.”

“But we earned it!”

“Dr. Levine talked to our parents!”

“We already have permission!”

“You have permission,” Thorne said severely, “to go on a field test in the woods a hundred miles from here. But we’re not doing that. We’re going someplace that might be very dangerous, and you’re not coming with us, and that’s final.”

“But—”

“Kids,” Thorne said. “Don’t piss me off. I’m going to go make a phone call. You get your stuff together. You’re going home.”

And he turned and walked away.

“Gee,” Kelly said.

Arby stuck his tongue out at the departing Thorne and muttered, “What an asshole.”

“Get with the program, Arby,” Thorne said, not looking back. “You two guys are going home. Period.”

He went into his office and slammed the door.

Arby stuck his hands in his pockets. “They couldn’t have figured it out without our help.”

“I know, Arb,” she said. “But we can’t make him take us.”

They turned to Malcolm. “Dr. Malcolm, can you please—”

“Sorry,” Malcolm said. “I can’t.”

“But—”

“The answer is no, kids. It’s just too dangerous.”

Dejected, they drifted over to the vehicles, gleaming beneath the ceiling lights. The Explorer with the black photovoltaic panels on the roof and hood, the inside crammed with glowing electronic equipment. Just looking at the Explorer gave them a sense of adventure—an adventure they would not be part of.

Arby peered into the larger trailer, cupping his eyes over the window. “Wow, look at this!”

“I’m going in,” Kelly said, and she opened the door. She was momentarily surprised at how solid and heavy it was. Then she climbed up the steps into the trailer.

Inside, the trailer was fitted out with gray upholstery and much more electronic equipment. It was divided into sections, for different laboratory functions. The main area was a biological lab, with specimen trays, dissecting pans, and microscopes that connected to video monitors. The lab also included biochemistry equipment, spectrometers, and a series of automated sample-analyzers. Next to it there was an extensive computer section, a bank of processors, and a communications section. All the lab equipment was miniaturized, and built into small tables that slid into the walls, and then bolted down.

“This is cool,” Arby said.

Kelly didn’t answer. She was looking closely at the lab. Dr. Levine had designed this trailer, apparently with a very specific purpose. There was no provision for geology, or botany, or chemistry, or lots of other things that a field team might be expected to study. It wasn’t a general scientific lab at all. There really seemed to be just a biology unit, and a large computer unit.

Biology, and computers.

Period.

What had this trailer been built to study?

Set in the wall was a small bookshelf, the books held in place with a Velcro strap. She scanned the titles: Modeling Adaptive Biological Systems, Vertebrate Behavioral Dynamics, Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems, Dinosaurs of North America, Preadaptation and Evolution.… It seemed like a strange set of books to take on a wilderness expedition; if there was a logic behind it, she didn’t see it.

She moved on. At intervals along the walls, she could see where the trailer had been strengthened; dark carbon-honeycomb strips ran up the walls. She had overheard Thorne saying it was the same material used in supersonic jet fighters. Very light and very strong. And she noticed that all the windows had been replaced with that special glass with fine wire mesh inside it.

Why was the trailer so strong?

It made her a little uneasy, when she thought about it. She remembered the telephone call with Dr. Levine, earlier in the day. He had said he was surrounded.

Surrounded by what?

He had said: I can smell them, especially at night.

What was he referring to?

Who was them?

Still uneasy, Kelly moved toward the back of the trailer, where there was a homey little living area, complete with gingham curtains on the windows. Compact kitchen, a toilet, and four beds. Storage compartments above and below the beds. There was even a little walk-in shower. It was nice.

From there, she went through the accordion pleating that connected the two trailers. It was a little bit like the connection between two railway cars, a short transitional passage. She emerged inside the second trailer, which seemed to be mostly utility storage: extra tires, spare parts, more lab equipment, shelves and cabinets. All the extra supplies that meant an expedition to some far-off place. There was even a motorcycle hanging off the back of the trailer. She tried some of the cabinets, but they were locked.

But even here there were extra reinforcing strips as well. This section had also been built especially strong.

Why? she wondered. Why so strong?

“Look at this,” Arby said, standing before a wall unit. It was a complex of glowing LED displays and lots of buttons, and looked to Kelly like a complicated thermostat.

“What does it do?” Kelly said.

“Monitors the whole trailer,” he said. “You can do everything from here. All the systems, all the equipment. And look, there’s TV.…” He pushed a button, and a monitor glowed to life. It showed Eddie walking toward them, across the floor.

“And, hey, what’s this?” Arby said. At the bottom of the display was a button with a security cover. He flipped the cover open. The button was silver and said DEF.

“Hey, I bet this is that bear defense he was talking about.”

A moment later, Eddie opened the trailer door and said, “You better stop that, you’ll drain the batteries. Come on, now. You heard what the doc said. Time for you kids to go home.”

Kelly and Arby exchanged glances.

“Okay,” Kelly said. “We’re going.”

Reluctantly, they left the trailer.

They walked across the shed to Thorne’s office to say goodbye. Arby said, “I wish he’d let us go.”

“Me, too.”

“I don’t want to stay home for break,” he said. “They’re just going to be working all the time.” He meant his parents.

“I know.”

Kelly didn’t want to go home, either. This idea of a field test during spring break was perfect for her, because it got her out of the house, and out of a bad situation. Her mother did data entry in an insurance company during the day, and at night she worked as a waitress at Denny’s. So her mom was always busy at her jobs, and her latest boyfriend, Phil, tended to hang around the house a lot at night. It had been okay when Emily was there, too, but now Emily was studying nursing at the community college, so Kelly was alone in the house. And Phil was sort of creepy. But her mother liked Phil, so she never wanted to hear Kelly say anything bad about him. She just told Kelly to grow up.

So now Kelly went to Thorne’s office, hoping against hope that at the last minute he would relent. He was on the phone, his back to them. On the screen of his computer, they saw one of the satellite images they had taken from Levine’s apartment. Thorne was zooming in on the image, successive magnifications. They knocked on the door, opened it a little.

“Bye, Dr. Thorne.”

“See you, Dr. Thorne.”

Thorne turned, holding the phone to his ear. “Bye, kids.” He gave a brief wave.

Kelly hesitated. “Listen, could we just talk to you for a minute about—”

Thorne shook his head. “No.”

“But—”

“No, Kelly. I’ve got to place this call now,” he said. “It’s already four a.m. in Africa, and in a little while she’ll go to sleep.”

“Who?”

“Sarah Harding.”

“Sarah Harding is coming, too?” she said, lingering at the door.

“I don’t know.” Thorne shrugged. “Have a good vacation, kids. See you in a week. Thanks for your help. Now get out of here.” He looked across the shed. “Eddie, the kids are leaving. Show them to the door, and lock them out! Get me those papers! And pack a bag, you’re coming with me!” Then in a different voice he said, “Yes, operator, I’m still waiting.”

And he turned away.

Harding

Through the night-vision goggles, the world appeared in shades of fluorescent green. Sarah Harding stared out at the African savannah. Directly ahead, above the high grass, she saw the rocky outcrop of a kopje. Bright-green pinpoints glowed back from the boulders. Probably rock hyraxes, she thought, or some other small rodent.

Standing up in her Jeep, wearing a sweatshirt against the cool night air, feeling the weight of the goggles, she turned her head slowly. She could hear the yelping in the night, and she was trying to locate the source.

Even from her high vantage point, standing up in the vehicle, she knew the animals would be hidden from direct view. She turned slowly north, looking for movement in the grass. She saw none. She looked back quickly, the green world swirling momentarily. Now she faced south.

And she saw them.

The grass rippled in a complex pattern as the pack raced forward, yelping and barking, prepared to attack. She caught a glimpse of the female she called Face One, or F1. F1 was distinguished by a white streak between her eyes. F1 loped along, in the peculiar sideways gait of hyenas; her teeth were bared; she glanced back at the rest of the pack, noting their position.

Sarah Harding swung the glasses through the darkness, looking ahead of the pack. She saw the prey: a herd of African buffalo, standing belly-deep in the grass, agitated. They were bellowing and stamping their feet.

The hyenas yelped louder, a pattern of sound that would confuse the prey. They rushed through the herd, trying to break it up, trying to separate the calves from their mothers. African buffalo looked dull and stupid, but in fact they were among the most dangerous large African mammals, heavy powerful creatures with sharp horns and notoriously mean dispositions. The hyenas could not hope to bring down an adult, unless it was injured or sick.

But they would try to take a calf.

Sitting behind the wheel of the Jeep, Makena, her assistant, said, “You want to move closer?”

“No, this is fine.”

In fact, it was more than fine. Their Jeep was on a slight rise, and they had a better-than-average view. With any luck, she would record the entire attack pattern. She turned on the video camera, mounted on a tripod five feet above her head, and dictated rapidly into the tape recorder.

“F1 south, F2 and F5 flanking, twenty yards. F3 center. F6 circling wide east. Can’t see F7. F8 circling north. F1 straight through. Disrupting. Herd moving, stamping. There’s F7. Straight through. F8 angling through from the north. Coming out, circling again.”

This was classic hyena behavior. The lead animals ran through the herd, while others circled it, then came in from the sides. The buffalo couldn’t keep track of their attackers. She listened to the herd bellowing, even as the group panicked, broke its tight clustered formation. The big animals moved apart, turning, looking. Harding couldn’t see the calves; they were below the grass. But she could hear their plaintive cries.

Now the hyenas came back. The buffalo stamped their feet, lowered their big heads menacingly. The grass rippled as the hyenas circled, yelping and barking, the sounds more staccato. She caught a brief glimpse of female F8, her jaws already red. But Harding hadn’t seen the actual attack.

The buffalo herd moved a short distance to the east, where it regrouped. One female buffalo now stood apart from the herd. She bellowed continuously at the hyenas. They must have taken her calf.

Harding felt frustrated. It had happened so swiftly—too swiftly—which could only mean that the hyenas had been lucky, or the calf was injured. Or perhaps very young, even newborn; a few of the buffalo were still calving. She would have to review the videotape, to try and reconstruct what had happened. The perils of studying fast-moving nocturnal animals, she thought.

But there was no question they had taken an animal. All the hyenas were clustered around a single area of grass; they yelped and jumped. She saw F3, and then F5, their muzzles bloody. Now the pups came up, squealing to get at the kill. The adults immediately made room for them, helped them to eat. Sometimes they pulled away flesh from the carcass, and held it so the young ones could eat.

Their behavior was familiar to Sarah Harding, who had become in recent years the foremost expert on hyenas in the world. When she first reported her findings, she was greeted with disbelief and even outrage from colleagues, who disputed her results in very personal terms. She was attacked for being a woman, for being attractive, for having “an overbearing feminist perspective.” The university reminded her she was on tenure track. Colleagues shook their heads. But Harding had persisted, and slowly, over time, as more data accumulated, her view of hyenas had come to be accepted.

Still, hyenas would never be appealing creatures, she thought, watching them feed. They were ungainly, heads too big and bodies sloping, coats ragged and mottled, gait awkward, vocalizations too reminiscent of an unpleasant laugh. In an increasingly urban world of concrete skyscrapers, wild animals were romanticized, classified as noble or ignoble, heroes or villains. And in this media-driven world, hyenas were simply not photogenic enough to be admirable. Long since cast as the laughing villains of the African plain, they were hardly thought worth a systematic study until Harding had begun her own research.

What she had discovered cast hyenas in a very different light. Brave hunters and attentive parents, they lived in a remarkably complex social structure—and a matriarchy as well. As for their notorious yelping vocalizations, they actually represented an extremely sophisticated form of communication.

She heard a roar, and through her night-vision goggles saw the first of the lions approaching the kill. It was a large female, circling closer. The hyenas barked and snapped at the lioness, guiding their own pups off into the grass. Within a few moments, other lions appeared, and settled down to feed on the hyenas’ kill.

Now, lions, she thought. There was a truly nasty animal. Although called the king of beasts, lions in truth were actually vile and—

The phone rang.

“Makena,” she said.

The phone rang again. Who could be calling her now?

She frowned. Through the goggles, she saw the lionesses look up, heads turning in the night.

Makena was fumbling beneath the dashboard, looking for the phone. It rang three more times before he found it.

She heard him say, “Jambo, mzee. Yes, Dr. Harding is here.” He handed the phone up to her. “It’s Dr. Thorne.”

Reluctantly, she removed her night goggles, and took the phone. She knew Thorne well; he had designed most of the equipment in her Jeep. “Doc, this better be important.”

“It is,” Thorne said. “I’m calling about Richard.”

“What about him?” She caught his concern, but didn’t understand why. Lately, Levine had been a pain in the neck, telephoning her almost daily from California, picking her brains about field work with animals. He had lots of questions about hides, and blinds, data protocols, record-keeping, it went on and on.…

“Did he ever tell you what he intended to study?” Thorne asked.

“No,” she said. “Why?”

“Nothing at all?”

“No,” Harding said. “He was very secretive. But I gathered he’d located an animal population that he could use to make some point about biological systems. You know how obsessive he is. Why?”

“Well, he’s missing, Sarah. Malcolm and I think he’s in some kind of trouble. We’ve located him on an island in Costa Rica, and we’re going to get him now.”

“Now?” she said.

“Tonight. We’re flying to San José in a few hours. Ian’s going with me. We want you to come, too.”

“Doc,” she said. “Even if I took a flight out of Seronera tomorrow morning to Nairobi, it’d take me almost a day to get there. And that’s if I got lucky. I mean—”

“You decide,” Thorne said, interrupting. “I’ll give you the details, and you decide what you want to do.”

He gave her the information, and she wrote it on the notepad strapped to her wrist. Then Thorne rang off.

She stood staring out at the African night, feeling the cool breeze on her face. Off in the darkness, she heard the growl of the lions at the kill. Her work was here. Her life was here.

Makena said, “Dr. Harding? What do we do?”

“Go back,” she said. “I have to pack.”

“You’re leaving?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m leaving.”

Message

Thorne drove to the airport, the lights of San Francisco disappearing behind them. Malcolm sat in the passenger seat. He looked back at the Explorer driving behind them and said, “Does Eddie know what this is all about?”

“Yes,” Thorne said. “But I’m not sure he believes it.”

“And the kids don’t know?”

“No,” Thorne said.

There was a beeping alongside him. Thorne pulled out his little black Envoy, a radio pager. A light was flashing. He flipped up the screen, and handed it to Malcolm. “Read it for me.”

“It’s from Arby,” Malcolm said. “Says, ‘Have a good trip. If you want us, call. We’ll be standing by if you need our help.’ And he gives his phone number.”

Thorne laughed. “You got to love those kids. They never give up.” Then he frowned, as a thought occurred to him. “What’s the time on that message?”

“Four minutes ago,” Malcolm said. “Came in via netcom.”

“Okay. Just checking.”

They turned right, toward the airport. They saw the lights in the distance. Malcolm stared forward gloomily. “It’s very unwise for us to be rushing off like this. It’s not the right way to go about it.”

Thorne said, “We should be all right. As long as we have the right island.”

“We do,” Malcolm said.

“How do you know?”

“The most important clue was something I didn’t want the kids to know about. A few days ago, Levine saw the carcass of one of the animals.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. He had a chance to look at it, before the officials burned it. And he discovered that it was tagged. He cut the tag off and sent it to me.”

“Tagged? You mean like—”

“Yes. Like a biological specimen. The tag was old, and it showed pitting from sulfuric acid.”

“Must be volcanic,” Thorne said.

“Exactly.”

“And you say it was an old tag?”

“Several years,” Malcolm said. “But the most interesting finding was the way the animal died. Levine concluded the animal had been injured while it was still alive—a deep slashing cut in the leg that went right down to the bone.”

Thorne said, “You’re saying the animal was injured by another dinosaur.”

“Yes. Exactly.”

They drove a moment in silence. “Who else besides us knows about this island?”

“I don’t know,” Malcolm said. “But somebody’s trying to find out. My office was broken into today, and photographed.”

“Great.” Thorne sighed. “But you didn’t know where the island was, did you?”

“No. I hadn’t put it together yet.”

“Do you think anybody else has?”

“No,” Malcolm said. “We’re on our own.”

Exploitation

Lewis Dodgson threw open the door marked ANIMAL QUARTERS, and immediately all the dogs began barking. Dodgson walked down the corridor between the rows of cages, stacked ten feet high on both sides. The building was large; the Biosyn Corporation of Cupertino, California, required an extensive animal-testing facility.

Walking alongside him, Rossiter, the head of the company, gloomily brushed the lapels of his Italian suit. “I hate this fucking place,” he said. “Why did you want me to come here?”

“Because,” Dodgson said. “We need to talk about the future.”

“Stinks in here,” Rossiter said. He glanced at his watch. “Get on with it, Lew.”

“We can talk in here.” Dodgson led him to a glass-walled superintendent’s booth, in the center of the building. The glass cut down the sound of the barking. But through the windows, they could look out at the rows of animals.

“It’s simple,” Dodgson said, starting to pace. “But I think it’s important.”

Lewis Dodgson was forty-five years old, bland-faced and balding. His features were youthful, and his manner was mild. But appearances were deceiving—the baby-faced Dodgson was one of the most ruthless and aggressive geneticists of his generation. Controversy had dogged his career: as a graduate student at Hopkins, he had been dismissed for planning human gene therapy without FDA permission. Later, after joining Biosyn, he had conducted a controversial rabies-vaccine test in Chile—the illiterate farmers who were the subjects were never informed they were being tested.

In each case, Dodgson explained that he was a scientist in a hurry, and could not be held back by regulations drawn up for lesser souls. He called himself “results-oriented,” which really meant he did whatever he considered necessary to achieve his goal. He was also a tireless self-promoter. Within the company, Dodgson presented himself as a researcher, even though he lacked the ability to do original research, and had never done any. His intellect was fundamentally derivative; he never conceived of anything until someone else had thought of it first. He was very good at “developing” research, which meant stealing someone else’s work at an early stage. In this, he was without scruple and without peer. For many years he had run the reverse-engineering section at Biosyn, which in theory examined competitors’ products and determined how they were made. But in practice, “reverse engineering” involved a great deal of industrial espionage.

Rossiter, of course, had no illusions about Dodgson. He disliked him, and avoided him as much as possible. Dodgson was always taking chances, cutting corners; he made Rossiter uneasy. But Rossiter also knew that modern biotechnology was highly competitive. To stay competitive, every company needed a man like Dodgson. And Dodgson was very good at what he did.

“I’ll come right to the point,” Dodgson said, turning to Rossiter. “If we act quickly, I believe we have an opportunity to acquire the InGen technology.”

Rossiter sighed. “Not again.…”

“I know, Jeff. I know how you feel. I admit, there is some history here.”

“History? The only history is you failed—time and again. We’ve tried this, back door and front door. Hell, we even tried to buy the company when it was in Chapter 11, because you told us it would be available. But it turned out it wasn’t. The Japanese wouldn’t sell.”

“I understand, Jeff. But let’s not forget—”

“What I can’t forget,” Rossiter said, “is that we paid seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars to your friend Nedry, and have nothing to show for it.”

“But Jeff—”

“Then we paid five hundred thousand to that Dai-Ichi marriage broker. Nothing to show for that, either. Our attempts to acquire InGen technology have been a complete fucking failure. That’s what I can’t forget.”

“But the point,” Dodgson said, “is that we kept trying for a good reason. This technology is vital to the future of the company.”

“So you say.”

“The world is changing, Jeff. I’m talking about solving one of the major problems this company faces in the twenty-first century.”

“Which is?”

Dodgson pointed out the window, at the barking dogs. “Animal testing. Let’s face it, Jeff: every year, we get more pressure not to use animals for testing and research. Every year, more demonstrations, more break-ins, more bad press. First it was just simple-minded zealots and Hollywood celebrities. But now it’s a bandwagon: even university philosophers are beginning to argue that it’s unethical for monkeys, and dogs, and even rats to be subjected to the indignities of laboratory research. We’ve even had some protests about our ‘exploitation’ of squid, even though they’re on dinner tables all over the world. I’m telling you, Jeff, there’s no end to this trend. Eventually, somebody’s going to say we can’t even exploit bacteria to make genetic products.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Just wait. It’ll happen. And it’ll shut us down. Unless we have a genuinely created animal. Consider—an animal that is extinct, and is brought back to life, is for all practical purposes not an animal at all. It can’t have any rights. It’s already extinct. So if it exists, it can only be something we have made. We made it, we patent it, we own it. And it is a perfect research testbed. And we believe that the enzyme and hormone systems of dinosaurs are identical to mammalian systems. In the future, drugs can be tested on small dinosaurs as successfully as they are now tested on dogs and rats—with much less risk of legal challenge.”

Rossiter was shaking his head. “You think.”

“I know. They’re basically big lizards, Jeff. And nobody loves a lizard. They’re not like these cute doggies that lick your hand and break your heart. Lizards have no personality. They’re snakes with legs.”

Rossiter sighed.

“Jeff. We’re talking about real freedom, here. Because, at the moment, everything to do with living animals is tied up in legal and moral knots. Big-game hunters can’t shoot a lion or an elephant—the same animals their fathers and grandfathers used to shoot, and then pose proudly for a photo. Now there are forms, licenses, expenses—and plenty of guilt. These days, you don’t dare shoot a tiger and admit it afterward. In the modern world, it’s a much more serious transgression to shoot a tiger than to shoot your parents. Tigers have advocates. But now imagine: a specially stocked hunting preserve, maybe somewhere in Asia, where individuals of wealth and importance could hunt tyrannosaurs and triceratops in a natural setting. It would be an incredibly desirable attraction. How many hunters have a stuffed elk head on their wall? The world’s full of them. But how many can claim to have a snarling tyrannosaurus head, hanging above the wet bar?”

“You’re not serious.”

“I’m trying to make a point here, Jeff: these animals are totally exploitable. We can do anything we want with them.”

Rossiter stood up from the table, put his hands in his pockets. He sighed, then looked up at Dodgson.

“The animals still exist?”

Dodgson nodded slowly.

“And you know where they are?”

Dodgson nodded.

“Okay,” Rossiter said. “Do it.”

He turned toward the door, then paused, looked back. “But, Lew,” he said. “Let’s be clear. This is it. This is absolutely the last time. Either you get the animals now, or it’s over. This is the last time. Got it?”

“Don’t worry,” Dodgson said. “This time, I’ll get them.”

THIRD CONFIGURATION

“In the intermediate phase, swiftly developing complexity within the system hides the risk of imminent chaos. But the risk is there.”

IAN MALCOLM

Costa Rica

There was a drenching downpour in Puerto Cortés. Rain drummed on the roof of the little metal shed beside the airfield. Dripping wet, Thorne stood and waited while the Costa Rican official went over the papers, again and again. Rodríguez was his name, and he was just a kid in his twenties, wearing an ill-fitting uniform, terrified of making a mistake.

Thorne looked out at the runway, where, in the soft dawn light, the cargo containers were being clamped to the bellies of two big Huey helicopters. Eddie Carr was out there in the rain with Malcolm, shouting as the workmen secured the clamps.

Rodríguez shuffled the papers. “Now, Señor Thorne, according to this, your destination is Isla Sorna.…”

“That’s right.”

“And your containers have only vehicles?”

“Yes, that’s right. Research vehicles.”

“Sorna is a primitive place. There is no petrol, no supplies, not even any roads to speak of.…”

“Have you been there?”

“Myself, no. People here have no interest in this island. It is a wild spot, rock and jungle. And there is no place for a boat to land, except in very special weather conditions. For example, today one cannot go there.”

“I understand,” Thorne said.

“I just wish that you will be prepared,” Rodríguez said, “for the difficulties you will find there.”

“I think we’re prepared.”

“You are taking adequate petrol for your vehicles?”

Thorne sighed. Why bother to explain? “Yes, we are.”

“And there are just three of you, Dr. Malcolm, yourself, and your assistant, Señor Carr?”

“Correct.”

“And your intended stay is less than one week?”

“That’s correct. More like two days: with any luck, we expect to be off the island sometime tomorrow.”

Rodríguez shuffled the papers again, as if looking for a hidden clue. “Well …”

“Is there a problem?” Thorne said, glancing at his watch.

“No problem, señor. Your permits are signed by the Director General of the Biological Preserves. They are in order.…” Rodríguez hesitated. “But it is very unusual, that such a permit would be granted at all.”

“Why is that?”

“I do not know the details, but there was some trouble on one of the islands a few years ago, and since then the Department of Biological Preserves has closed all the Pacific islands to tourists.”

“We’re not tourists,” Thorne said.

“I understand that, Señor Thorne.”

More shuffling of papers.

Thorne waited.

Out on the runway, the container clamps locked in place, and the containers lifted off the ground.

“Very well, Señor Thorne,” Rodríguez said finally, stamping the papers. “I wish you good luck.”

“Thank you,” Thorne said. He tucked the papers in his pocket, ducked his head against the rain, and ran back out on the runway.

Three miles offshore, the helicopters broke through the coastal cloud layer, into early-morning sunlight. From the cockpit of the lead Huey, Thorne could look up and down the coast. He saw five islands at various distances offshore—harsh rocky pinnacles, rising out of rough blue sea. The islands were each several miles apart, undoubtedly part of an old volcanic chain.

He pressed the speaker button. “Which is Sorna?”

The pilot pointed ahead. “We call them the Five Deaths,” he said. “Isla Muerte, Isla Matanceros, Isla Pena, Isla Tacaño, and Isla Sorna, which is the big one farthest north.”

“Have you been there?”

“Never, señor. But I believe there will be a landing site.”

“How do you know?”

“Some years ago, there were some flights there. I have heard the Americans would come, and fly there, sometimes.”

“Not Germans?”

“No, no. There have been no Germans since … I do not know. The World War. They were Americans that came.”

“When was that?”

“I am not sure. Perhaps ten years ago.”

The helicopter turned north, passing over the nearest island. Thorne glimpsed rugged, volcanic terrain, overgrown with dense jungle. There was no sign of life, or of human habitation.

“To the local people, these islands are not happy places,” the pilot said. “They say, no good comes from here.” He smiled. “But they do not know. They are superstitious Indians.”

Now they were over open water, with Isla Sorna directly ahead. It was clearly an old volcanic crater: bare, reddish-gray rock walls, an eroded cone.

“Where do the boats land?”

The pilot pointed to where the sea surged and crashed against the cliffs. “On the east side of this island, there are many caves, made by the waves. Some of the local people call this Isla Gemido. It means ‘groan,’ from the sound of the waves inside the caves. Some of the caves go all the way through to the interior, and a boat can pass through at certain times. But not in weather as you see it now.”

Thorne thought of Sarah Harding. If she was coming, she would land later today. “I have a colleague who may be arriving this afternoon,” he said. “Can you bring her out?”

“I am sorry,” the pilot said. “We have a job in Golfo Juan. We will not be back until tonight.”

“What can she do?”

The pilot squinted at the sea. “Perhaps she can come by boat. The sea changes by the hour. She might have luck.”

“And you will come back for us tomorrow?”

“Yes, Señor Thorne. We will come in the early morning. It is the best time, for the winds.”

The helicopter approached from the west, rising several hundred feet, moving over the rocky cliffs to reveal the interior of Isla Gemido. It appeared just like the others: volcanic ridges and ravines, heavily overgrown with dense jungle. It was beautiful from the air, but Thorne knew it would be dauntingly difficult to move through that terrain. He stared down, looking for roads.

The helicopter thumped lower, circling the central area of the island. Thorne saw no buildings, no roads. The helicopter descended toward the jungle. The pilot said, “Because of the cliffs, the winds here are very bad. Many gusts and updrafts. There is only one place on the island where it is safe to land.” He peered out the window. “Ah. Yes. There.”

Thorne saw an open clearing, overgrown with tall grass.

“We land there,” the pilot said.

Isla Sorna

Eddie Carr stood in the tall grass of the clearing, turned away from the flying dust as the two helicopters lifted off the ground and rose into the sky. In a few moments they were small specks, their sound fading. Eddie shaded his eyes as he looked upward. In a forlorn voice he said, “When’re they coming back?”

“Tomorrow morning,” Thorne said. “We’ll have found Levine by then.”

“At least, we’d better,” Malcolm said.

And then the helicopters were gone, disappearing over the high rim of the crater. Carr stood with Thorne and Malcolm in the clearing, enveloped in morning heat, and deep silence on the island.

“Kind of creepy here,” Eddie said, pulling his baseball cap down lower over his eyes.

Eddie Carr was twenty-four years old, raised in Daly City. Physically, he was dark-haired, compact and strong. His body was thick, the muscles bunched, but his hands were elegant, the fingers long and tapered. Eddie had a talent—Thorne would have said, a genius—for mechanical things. Eddie could build anything, and fix anything. He could see how things worked, just by looking at them. Thorne had hired him three years earlier, his first job out of community college. It was supposed to be a temporary job, earning money so he could go back to school and get an advanced degree. But Thorne had long since become dependent on Eddie. And Eddie, for his part, wasn’t much interested in going back to the books.

At the same time, he hadn’t counted on anything like this, he thought, looking around him at the clearing. Eddie was an urban kid, accustomed to the action of the city, the honk of horns and the rush of traffic. This desolate silence made him uneasy.

“Come on,” Thorne said, putting a hand on his shoulder, “let’s get started.” They turned to the cargo containers, left by the helicopter. They were sitting a few yards away, in the tall grass.

“Can I help?” Malcolm said, a few yards away.

“If you don’t mind, no,” Eddie said. “We’d better unpack these ourselves.”

They spent half an hour unbolting the rear panels, lowering them to the ground, and entering the containers. After that, they took only a few minutes to release the vehicles. Eddie got behind the wheel of the Explorer and flicked on the ignition. There was hardly any sound, just a soft whirr of the vacuum pump starting up. Thorne said, “How’s your charge?”

“Full,” Eddie said.

“Batteries okay?”

“Yeah. Seem fine.”

Eddie was relieved. He had supervised the conversion of these vehicles to electric power, but it was a rush job, and they hadn’t had time to test them thoroughly afterward. And though it was true that electric cars employed less complex technology than the internal-combustion engine—that chugging relic of the nineteenth century—Eddie knew that taking untested equipment into the field was always risky.

Especially when that equipment also used the latest technology. That fact troubled Eddie more than he was willing to admit. Like most born mechanics, he was deeply conservative. He liked things to work—work, no matter what—and to him that meant using established, proven technology. Unfortunately, he had been voted down this time.

Eddie had two particular areas of concern. One was the black photovoltaic panels, with their rows of octagonal silicon wafers, mounted on the roof and hood of the vehicles. These panels were efficient, and much less fragile than the old photovoltaics. Eddie had mounted them with special vibration-damping units of his own design. But the fact remained, if the panels were injured in any way, they would no longer be able to charge the vehicles, or run the electronics. All their systems would stop dead.

His other concern was the batteries themselves. Thorne had selected the new lithium-ion batteries from Nissan, which were extremely efficient on a weight basis. But they were still experimental, which to Eddie was just a polite word for “unreliable.”

Eddie had argued for backups; he had argued for a little gasoline-generator, just in case; he had argued for lots of things. And he had always been voted down. Under the circumstances, Eddie did the only sensible thing: he built in a few extras, and didn’t tell anybody about it.

He was pretty sure Thorne knew he had done that. But Thorne never said anything. And Eddie never brought it up. But now that he was here, on this island in the middle of nowhere, he was glad he had. Because the fact was, you never knew.

Thorne watched as Eddie backed the Explorer out of the container, and into the high grass. Eddie left the car in the middle of the clearing, where the sunlight would strike the panels and top up the charge.

Thorne got behind the wheel of the first trailer, and backed it out. It was odd to drive a vehicle which was so quiet; the loudest sound was the tires on the metal container. And once it was on the grass, there was hardly any sound at all. Thorne climbed out, and linked up the two trailers, locking them together with the flexible steel accordion connector.

Finally, he turned to the motorcycle. It, too, was electric; Thorne rolled it to the rear of the Explorer, lifted it onto brackets, hooked the power cord into the same system that ran the vehicle, and recharged the battery. He stepped back. “That does it.”

In the hot, quiet clearing, Eddie stared toward the high circular rim of the crater, rising in the distance above the dense jungle. The bare rock shimmered in the morning heat, the walls forbidding and harsh. He had a sense of desolation, of entrapment. “Why would anyone ever come here?” he said.

Malcolm, leaning on his cane, smiled. “To get away from it all, Eddie. Don’t you ever want to get away from it all?”

“Not if I can help it,” Eddie said. “Me, I always like a Pizza Hut nearby, you know what I mean?”

“Well, you’re a ways from one now.”

Thorne returned to the back panel of the trailer, and pulled out a pair of heavy rifles. Beneath the barrel of each hung two aluminum canisters, side by side. He handed one rifle to Eddie, showed the other to Malcolm. “You ever seen these?”

“Read about them,” Malcolm said. “This is the Swedish thing?”

“Right. Lindstradt air gun. Most expensive rifle in the world. Rugged, simple, accurate, and reliable. Fires a subsonic Fluger impact-delivery dart, containing whatever compound you want.” Thorne cracked open the cartridge bank, revealing a row of plastic containers filled with straw-colored liquid. Each cartridge was tipped with a three-inch needle. “We’ve loaded the enhanced venom of Conus purpurascens, the South Sea cone shell. It’s the most powerful neurotoxin in the world. Acts within a two-thousandth of a second. It’s faster than the nerve-conduction velocity. The animal’s down before it feels the prick of the dart.”

“Lethal?”

Thorne nodded. “No screwing around here. Just remember, you don’t want to shoot yourself in the foot with this, because you’ll be dead before you realize that you’ve pulled the trigger.”

Malcolm nodded. “Is there an antidote?”

“No. But what’s the point? There’d be no time to administer it if there was.”

“That makes things simple,” Malcolm said, taking the gun.

“Just thought you ought to know,” Thorne said. “Eddie? Let’s get going.”

The Stream

Eddie climbed into the Explorer. Thorne and Malcolm climbed into the cab of the trailer. A moment later, the radio clicked. Eddie said, “You putting up the database, Doc?”

“Right now,” Thorne said.

He plugged the optical disk into the dashboard slot. On the small monitor facing him, he saw the island appear, but it was largely obscured behind patches of cloud. “What good is that?” Malcolm said.

“Just wait,” Thorne said. “It’s a system. It’s going to sum data.”

“Data from what?”

“Radar.” In a moment, a satellite radar image overlaid the photograph. The radar could penetrate the clouds. Thorne pressed a button, and the computer traced the edges, enhancing details, highlighting the faint spidery track of the road system.

“Pretty slick,” Malcolm said. But to Thorne, he seemed tense.

“I’ve got it,” Eddie said, on the radio.

Malcolm said, “He can see the same thing?”

“Yes. On his dashboard.”

“But I don’t have the GPS,” Eddie said, anxiously. “Isn’t it working?”

“You guys,” Thorne said. “Give it a minute. It’s reading the optical. Waystations are coming up.”

There was a cone-shaped Global Positioning Sensor mounted in the roof of the trailer. Taking radio data from orbiting navigation satellites thousands of miles overhead, the GPS could calculate the position of the vehicles within a few yards. In a moment, a flashing red X appeared on the map of the island.

“Okay,” Eddie said, on the radio. “I got it. Looks like a road leading out of the clearing to the north. That where we’re going?”

“I’d say so,” Thorne said. According to the map, the road twisted several miles across the interior of the island, before finally reaching a place where all the roads seemed to meet. There was the suggestion of buildings there, but it was hard to be sure.

“Okay, Doc. Here we go.”

Eddie drove past him, and took the lead. Thorne stepped on the accelerator, and the trailer hummed forward, following the Explorer. Beside him, Malcolm was silent, fiddling with a small notebook computer on his lap. He never looked out the window.

In a few moments, they had left the clearing behind, and were moving through dense jungle. Thorne’s panel lights flashed: the vehicle switched to its batteries. There wasn’t enough sunlight coming through the trees to power the trailer any more. They drove on.

“How you doing, Doc?” Eddie said. “You holding charge?”

“Just fine, Eddie.”

“He sounds nervous,” Malcolm said.

“Just worried about the equipment.”

“The hell,” Eddie said. “I’m worried about me.”

Although the road was overgrown and in poor condition, they made good progress. After about ten minutes, they came to a small stream, with muddy banks. The Explorer started across it, then stopped. Eddie got out, stepping over rocks in the water, walking back.

“What is it?”

“I saw something, Doc.”

Thorne and Malcolm got out of the trailer, and stood on the banks of the stream. They heard the distant cries of what sounded like birds. Malcolm looked up, frowning.

“Birds?” Thorne said.

Malcolm shook his head, no.

Eddie bent over, and plucked a strip of cloth out of the mud. It was dark-green Gore-Tex, with a strip of leather sewn along one edge. “That’s from one of our expedition packs,” he said.

“The one we made for Levine?”

“Yes, Doc.”

“You put a sensor in the pack?” Thorne asked. They usually sewed location sensors inside their expedition packs.

“Yes.”

“May I see that?” Malcolm asked. He took the strip of cloth and held it up to the light. He fingered the torn edge thoughtfully.

Thorne unclipped a small receiver from his belt. It looked like an oversized pager. He stared at the liquid-crystal readout. “I’m not getting any signal.…”

Eddie stared at the muddy bank. He bent over again. “Here’s another piece of cloth. And another. Seems like the pack was ripped into shreds, Doc.”

Another bird cry floated toward them, distant, unworldly. Malcolm stared off in the distance, trying to locate its source. And then he heard Eddie say, “Uh-oh. We have company.”

There were a half-dozen bright-green lizard-like animals, standing in a group near the trailer. They were about the size of chickens, and they chirped animatedly. They stood upright on their hind legs, balancing with their tails straight out. When they walked, their heads bobbed up and down in nervous little jerks, exactly like a chicken. And they made a distinctive squeaking sound, very reminiscent of a bird. Yet they looked like lizards with long tails. They had quizzical, alert faces, and they cocked their heads when they looked at the men.

Eddie said, “What is this, a salamander convention?”

The green lizards stood, watched. Several more appeared, from beneath the trailer, and from the foliage nearby. Soon there were a dozen lizards, watching and chittering.

“Compys,” Malcolm said. “Procompsognathus triassicus, is the actual name.”

“You mean these are—”

“Yes. They’re dinosaurs.”

Eddie frowned, stared. “I didn’t know they came so small,” he said finally.

“Dinosaurs were mostly small,” Malcolm said. “People always think they were huge, but the average dinosaur was the size of a sheep, or a small pony.”

Eddie said, “They look like chickens.”

“Yes. Very bird-like.”

“Is there any danger?” Thorne said.

“Not really,” Malcolm said. “They’re small scavengers, like jackals. They feed on dead animals. But I wouldn’t get close. Their bite is mildly poisonous.”

“I’m not getting close,” Eddie said. “They give me the creeps. It’s like they’re not scared.”

Malcolm had noticed that, too. “I imagine it’s because there haven’t been any human beings on this island. These animals don’t have any reason to fear man.”

“Well, let’s give them a reason,” Eddie said. He picked up a rock.

“Hey!” Malcolm said. “Don’t do that! The whole idea is—”

But Eddie had already thrown the rock. It landed near a cluster of compys, and the lizards ducked away. But the others hardly moved. A few of them hopped up and down, showing agitation. But the group stayed where they were. They just chittered, and cocked their heads.

“Weird,” Eddie said. He sniffed the air. “You notice that smell?”

“Yes,” Malcolm said. “They have a distinctive odor.”

“Rotten, is more like it,” Eddie said. “They smell rotten. Like something dead. And you ask me, it’s not natural, animals that don’t show fear like that. What if they have rabies or something?”

“They don’t,” Malcolm said.

“How do you know?”

“Because only mammals carry rabies.” But even as he said it, he wondered if that was right. Warm-blooded animals carried rabies. Were the compys warm-blooded? He wasn’t sure.

There was a rustling sound from above. Malcolm looked up at the canopy of trees overhead. He saw movement in the high foliage, as unseen small animals jumped from branch to branch. He heard squeaks and chirps, distinctly animal sounds.

“Those aren’t birds, up there,” Thorne said. “Monkeys?”

“Maybe,” Malcolm said. “I doubt it.”

Eddie shivered. “I say we get out of here.”

He returned to the stream, and climbed into the Explorer. Malcolm walked cautiously with Thorne back to the trailer entrance. The compys parted around them, but still did not run away. They stood all around their legs, chittering excitedly. Malcolm and Thorne climbed into the trailer and closed the doors, being careful not to shut them on the little creatures.

Thorne sat behind the wheel, and turned on the motor. Ahead, they saw that Eddie was already driving the Explorer through the stream, and heading up the sloping ridge on the far side.

“The, uh, procomso-whatevers,” Eddie said, over the radio. “They’re real, aren’t they?”

“Oh yes,” Malcolm said softly. “They’re real.”

The Road

Thorne was uneasy. He was beginning to understand how Eddie felt. He had built these vehicles, and he had an uncomfortable sense of isolation, of being in this faraway place with untested equipment. The road continued steeply upward through dark jungle for the next fifteen minutes. Inside the trailer, it grew uncomfortably warm. Sitting beside him, Malcolm said, “Air conditioning?”

“I don’t want to drain the battery.”

“Mind if I open the window?”

“If you think it’s all right,” Thorne said.

Malcolm shrugged. “Why not?” He pushed the button, and the power window rolled down. Warm air blew into the car. He glanced back at Thorne. “Nervous, Doc?”

“Sure,” Thorne said. “Damned right I am.” Even with the window open, he felt sweat running down his chest as he drove.

Over the radio, Eddie was saying, “I’m telling you, we should have tested first, Doc. Should have done it by the book. You don’t come to a place with poisonous chickens if you’re not sure your vehicles will hold up.”

“The cars are fine,” Thorne said. “How’s your levels?”

“High normal,” Eddie said. “Just great. Of course, we’ve only gone five miles. It’s nine in the morning, Doc.”

The road swung right, then left, following a series of switchbacks as the terrain became steeper. Hauling the big trailers, Thorne had to concentrate on his driving; it was a relief to focus his attention.

Ahead of them, the Explorer turned left, going higher up the road. “I don’t see any more animals,” Eddie said. He sounded relieved.

Finally the road flattened out as it turned, following the crest of the ridge. According to the GPS display, they were now heading northwest, toward the interior of the island. But the jungle still hemmed them in on all sides; they could not see much beyond the dense walls of foliage.

They came to a Y intersection in the road, and Eddie pulled over to the side. Thorne saw that in the crook of the Y was a faded wooden sign, with arrows pointing in both directions. To the left, the sign said “To Swamp.” To the right was another arrow, and the words, “To Site B.”

Eddie said, “Guys? Which way?”

“Go to Site B,” Malcolm said.

“You got it.” The Explorer started down the right fork. Thorne followed. Off to the right, sulfurous yellow steam issued from the ground, bleaching the nearby foliage white. The smell was strong.

“Volcanic,” Thorne said to Malcolm, “just as you predicted.” Driving past, they glimpsed a bubbling pool in the earth, crusted thick yellow around the edges.

“Yeah,” Eddie said, “but that’s active. In fact, I’d say that—holy shit!” Eddie’s brake lights flashed on, and his car slammed to a stop.

Thorne had to swerve, scraping jungle ferns on the side of the trailer, to miss him. He pulled up alongside the Explorer, and glared at Eddie. “Eddie, for Pete’s sake, will you—”

But Eddie wasn’t listening.

He was staring straight forward, his mouth wide open.

Thorne turned to look.

Directly ahead, the trees along the road had been beaten down, creating a gap in the foliage. They could see all the way from the ridge road across the entire island to the west. But Thorne hardly registered the panoramic view. Because all he saw was a large animal, the size of a hippopotamus, ambling across the road. Except it wasn’t a hippopotamus. This animal was pale brown, its skin covered with large plate-like scales. Around its head, it had a curving bony crest, and rising from this crest were two blunted horns. A third horn protruded above its snout.

Over the radio, he heard Eddie breathing in shallow gasps. “You know what that is?”

“That’s a triceratops,” Malcolm said. “A young one, by the looks of it.”

“Must be,” Eddie said. Ahead of them, a much larger animal now crossed the road. It was easily twice the size of the first, and its horns were long, curving, and sharp. “Because that’s his mom.”

A third triceratops appeared, then a fourth. There was a whole herd of creatures, ambling slowly across the road. They paid no attention to the vehicles as they crossed, passed through the gap, and descended down the hill, disappearing from view.

Only then were the men able to see through the gap itself. Thorne had a view across a vast marshy plain, with a broad river coursing through the center. On either side of the river, animals grazed. There was a herd of perhaps twenty medium-sized, dark-green dinosaurs to the south, their large heads intermittently poking up above the grass along the river. Nearby, Thorne saw eight duck-billed dinosaurs with large tube-like crests rising above their heads; they drank and lifted their heads, honking mournfully. Directly ahead, he saw a lone stegosaurus, with its curved back and its vertical rows of plates. The triceratops herd moved slowly past the stegosaur, which paid no attention to them. And to the west, rising above a clump of trees, they saw a dozen long, graceful necks of apatosaurs, their bodies hidden by the foliage that they lazily ate. It was a tranquil scene—but it was a scene from another world.

“Doc?” Eddie said. “What is this place?”

Site B

Sitting in the cars, they stared out over the plain. They watched the dinosaurs move slowly through the deep grass. They heard the soft cry of the duckbills. The separate herds moved peacefully beside the river.

Eddie said, “So what are we saying, this is a place that got bypassed by evolution? One of those places where time stands still?”

“Not at all,” Malcolm said. “There’s a perfectly rational explanation for what you are seeing. And we are going to—”

From the dashboard, there was a high-pitched beeping. On the GPS map, a blue grid was overlaid, with a flashing triangular point marked LEVN.

“It’s him!” Eddie said. “We got the son of a bitch!”

“You’re reading that?” Thorne said. “It’s pretty weak.…”

“It’s fine—it’s got enough signal strength to transmit the ID tab. That’s Levine, all right. Looks like it is coming from the valley over there.”

He started the Explorer, and it lurched forward up the road. “Let’s go,” Eddie said. “I want to get the hell out of here.”

With the flick of a switch, Thorne turned on the electric motor for the trailer, and heard the chug of the vacuum pump, the low whine of the automatic transmission. He put the trailer in gear, and followed behind.

The impenetrable jungle closed in around them again, close and hot. The trees overhead blocked nearly all the sunlight. As he drove, he heard the beeping become irregular. He glanced at the monitor, saw the flashing triangle was disappearing, then coming back again.

“Are we losing him, Eddie?” Thorne said.

“Doesn’t matter if we do,” Eddie said. “We’ve got a location on him now, and we can go right there. In fact, it should be just down this road here. Right past this guardhouse or whatever it is, dead ahead.”

Thorne looked past the Explorer, and saw a concrete structure and a tilting steel road-barrier. It did indeed look like a guardhouse. It was in disrepair, and overgrown with vines. They drove on, coming onto paved road. It was clear the foliage on either side had once been cut far back, fifty feet on either side. Pretty soon they came to a second guardhouse, and a second checkpoint.

They continued on another hundred yards, the road still curving slowly along the ridge. The surrounding foliage became sparser; through gaps in the ferns Thorne could see wooden outbuildings, all painted identical green. They seemed to be utility structures, perhaps sheds for equipment. He had the sense of entering a substantial complex.

And then, suddenly, they rounded a curve, and saw the entire complex spread out below them. It was about a half-mile away.

Eddie said, “What the hell is that?”

Thorne stared, astonished. In the center of the clearing he saw the flat roof of an enormous building. It covered several acres, stretching away into the distance. It was the size of two football fields. Beyond the vast roof was a large blocky building with a metal roof, which had the functional look of a power plant. But if so, it was as big as the power plant for a small town.

At the far end of the main building, Thorne saw loading docks, and turnarounds for trucks. Over to the right, partially hidden in foliage, there were a series of small structures that looked like cottages. But from a distance it was hard to be sure.

Taken together, the whole complex had a utilitarian quality that reminded Thorne of an industrial site, or a fabrication plant. He frowned, trying to put it together.

“Do you know what this is?” Thorne said to Malcolm.

“Yes,” Malcolm said, nodding slowly. “It’s what I suspected for some time now.”

“Yes?”

“It’s a manufacturing plant,” Malcolm said. “It’s a kind of factory.”

“But it’s huge,” Thorne said.

“Yes,” Malcolm said. “It had to be.”

Over the radio, Eddie said, “I’m still getting a reading from Levine. And guess what? It seems to be coming from that building.”

They drove past the covered front entrance to the main building, beneath the sagging portico. The building was of modern design, concrete and glass, but the jungle had long ago grown up around it. Vines hung from the roof. Panes of glass were broken; ferns sprouted between cracks in the concrete.

Thorne said, “Eddie? Got a reading?”

Eddie said, “Yeah. Inside. What do you want to do?”

“Set up base camp in that field over there,” Thorne said, pointing a half-mile to the left, where once, it seemed, there had been an extensive lawn. It was still an open clearing in the jungle; there would be sunlight for the photovoltaics. “Then we’ll have a look around.”

Eddie parked his Explorer, turning it around to face back the way they had come. Thorne maneuvered the trailers alongside the car, and cut the engine. He climbed out into the still, hot morning air. Malcolm got out and stood with him. Here in the center of the island, it was completely silent, except for the buzz of insects.

Eddie came over, slapping himself. “Great place, huh? No shortage of mosquitoes. You want to go get the son of a bitch now?” Eddie unclipped a receiver from his belt, and cupped his hand over the display, trying to see it in the sunlight. “Still right over there.” He pointed to the main building. “What do you say?”

“Let’s go get him,” Thorne said.

The three men turned, climbed into the Explorer, and, leaving the trailers behind, drove in hot sunlight toward the giant, ruined building.

Trailer

Inside the trailer, the sound of the car engine faded away, and there was silence. The dashboard glowed, the GPS map remained visible on the monitor; the flashing X marking their position. A small window in the monitor, titled “Active Systems,” indicated the battery charge, photovoltaic efficiency, and usage over the past twelve hours. The electronic readouts all glowed bright green.

In the living section, where the kitchen and beds were located, the recirculating water supply in the sink gurgled softly. Then there was a thumping sound, coming from the upper storage compartment, located near the ceiling. The thumping was repeated, and then there was silence.

After a moment, a credit card appeared through the crack of the compartment door. The card slid upward, lifting the panel latch, unhooking it. The door swung open, and a white bundle of padding fell out, landing with a dull thud on the floor. The padding unrolled, and Arby Benton groaned, stretching his small body.

“If I don’t pee, I’m going to scream,” he said, and he hurried on shaky legs into the tiny bathroom.

He sighed in relief. It had been Kelly’s idea for them to go, but she left it to Arby to figure out the details. And he had figured everything out perfectly, he thought—at least, almost everything. Arby had correctly anticipated it would be freezing cold in the cargo plane, and that they would have to bundle up; he’d stuffed their compartments with every blanket and sheet in the trailer. He’d anticipated they would be there at least twelve hours, and he put aside some cookies and bottles of water. In fact, he’d anticipated everything except the fact that, at the last minute, Eddie Carr would go through the trailer and latch all the storage compartments from the outside. Locking them in, so that, for the next twelve hours, he wouldn’t be able to go to the bathroom. For twelve hours!

He sighed again, his body relaxing. A steady stream of urine still flowed into the basin. No wonder! Agony! And he’d still be locked in there, he thought, if he hadn’t finally figured out—

Behind him, he heard muffled shouts. He flushed the toilet and went back, crouching down by the storage compartment beneath the bed. He quickly unlatched it; another padded bundle unrolled, and Kelly appeared beside him.

“Hey, Kel,” he said proudly. “We made it!”

“I have to go,” she said, dashing. She pulled the door shut behind her.

Arby said, “We did it! We’re here!”

“Just a minute, Arb. Okay?”

For the first time, he looked out the window of the trailer. All around them was a grassy clearing, and beyond that, the ferns and high trees of the jungle. And high above the tops of the trees, he saw the curving black rock of the volcanic rim.

So this was Isla Sorna, all right.

All right!

Kelly came out of the bathroom. “Ohhh. I thought I was going to die!” She looked at him, gave him a high five. “By the way, how’d you get your door unlatched?”

“Credit card,” he said.

She frowned. “You have a credit card?”

“My parents gave it to me, for emergencies,” he said. “And I figured this was an emergency.” He tried to make a joke out of it, to treat it lightly. Arby knew Kelly was sensitive about anything to do with money. She was always making comments about his clothes and things like that. And how he always had money for a taxi or a Coke at Larson’s Deli after school, or whatever. Once he said to her that he didn’t think money was so important, and she said, “Why would you?” in a funny voice. And ever since then he had tried to avoid the subject.

Arby wasn’t always clear about the right thing to do around people. Everyone treated him so weird, anyway. Because he was younger, of course. And because he was black. And because he was what the other kids called a brainer. He found himself engaged in a constant effort to be accepted, to blend in. Except he couldn’t. He wasn’t white, he wasn’t big, he wasn’t good at sports, and he wasn’t dumb. Most of his classes at school were so boring Arby could hardly stay awake in them. His teachers sometimes got annoyed with him, but what could he do? School was like a video played at super-slow speed. You could glance at it once an hour and not miss anything. And when he was around the other kids, how could he be expected to show interest in TV shows like “Melrose Place,” or the San Francisco 49ers, or the Shaq’s new commercial. He couldn’t. That stuff wasn’t important.

But Arby had long ago discovered it was unpopular to say so. It was better to keep your mouth shut. Because nobody understood him, except Kelly. She seemed to know what he was talking about, most of the time.

And Dr. Levine. At least the school had an advanced-placement track, which was moderately interesting to Arby. Not very interesting, of course, but better than the other classes. And when Dr. Levine had decided to teach the class, Arby had found himself excited by school for the first time in his life. In fact—

“So this is Isla Sorna, huh?” Kelly said, looking out the window at the jungle.

“Yeah,” Arby said. “I guess so.”

“You know, when they stopped the car earlier,” Kelly said, “could you hear what they were talking about?”

“Not really. All the padding.”

“Me neither,” Kelly said. “But they seemed pretty worked up about something.”

“Yeah, they did.”

“It sounded like they were talking about dinosaurs,” Kelly said. “Did you hear anything like that?”

Arby laughed, shaking his head. “No, Kel,” he said.

“Because I thought they did.”

“Come on, Kel.”

“I thought Thorne said ‘triceratops.’ ”

“Kel,” he said. “Dinosaurs have been extinct for sixty-five million years.”

“I know that.…”

He pointed out the window. “You see any dinosaurs out there?”

Kelly didn’t answer. She went to the other side of the trailer, and looked out the opposite window. She saw Thorne, Malcolm, and Eddie disappearing into the main building.

“They’re going to be pretty annoyed when they find us,” Arby said. “How do you think we should tell them?”

“We can let it be a surprise.”

“They’ll be mad,” he said.

“So? What can they do about it?” Kelly said.

“Maybe they’ll send us back.”

“How? They can’t.”

“Yeah. I guess.” Arby shrugged casually, but he was more troubled by this line of thought than he wanted to admit. This was all Kelly’s idea. Arby had never liked to break the rules, or to get into any kind of trouble. Whenever he had even had a mild reprimand from a teacher, he would get flushed and sweaty. And for the last twelve hours, he had been thinking about how Thorne and the others would react.

“Look,” Kelly said. “The thing is, we’re here to help find our friend Dr. Levine, that’s all. We’ve helped Dr. Thorne already.”

“Yes …”

“And we’ll be able to help them again.”

“Maybe …”

“They need our help.”

“Maybe,” Arby said. He didn’t feel convinced.

Kelly said, “I wonder what they have to eat here.” She opened the refrigerator. “You hungry?”

“Starving,” Arby said, suddenly aware that he was.

“So what do you want?”

“What is there?” He sat on the padded gray couch and stretched, as he watched Kelly poke through the refrigerator.

“Come and look,” she said, annoyed. “I’m not your stupid housekeeper.”

“Okay, okay, take it easy.”

“Well, you expect everybody to wait on you,” she said.

“I do not,” he said, getting quickly off the couch.

“You’re such a brat, Arby.”

“Hey,” he said. “What’s the big deal? Take it easy. You nervous about something?”

“No, I am not,” she said. She took a wrapped sandwich out of the refrigerator. Standing beside her, he looked briefly inside, grabbed the first sandwich he saw.

“You don’t want that,” she said.

“Yes, I do.”

“It’s tuna salad.”

Arby hated tuna salad. He put it back quickly, looked around again.

“That’s turkey on the left,” she said. “In the bun.”

He brought out a turkey sandwich. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” Sitting on the couch, she opened her own sandwich, wolfed it down hungrily.

“Listen, at least I got us here,” he said, unwrapping his own carefully. He folded the plastic neatly, set it aside.

“Yeah. You did. I admit it. You did that part all right.”

Arby ate his sandwich. He thought he had never tasted anything so good in his entire life. It was better even than his mother’s turkey sandwiches.

The thought of his mother gave him a pang. His mother was a gynecologist and very beautiful. She had a busy life, and wasn’t home very much, but whenever he saw her, she always seemed so peaceful. And Arby felt peaceful around her, too. They had a special relationship, the two of them. Even though lately she sometimes seemed uneasy about how much he knew. One night he had come into her study; she was going over some journal articles about progesterone levels and FSH. He looked over her shoulder at the columns of numbers and suggested that she might want to try a nonlinear equation to analyze the data. She gave him a funny look, a kind of separate look, thoughtful and distant from him, and at that moment he had felt—

“I’m getting another one,” Kelly said, going back to the refrigerator. She came out with two sandwiches, one in each hand.

“You think there’s enough?”

“Who cares? I’m starving,” she said, tearing off the wrapping on the first.

“Maybe we shouldn’t eat—”

“Arb, if you’re going to worry like this, we should have stayed home.”

He decided that was right. He was surprised to see that he had somehow finished his own sandwich. So he took the other one Kelly offered him.

Kelly ate, and stared out the window. “I wonder what that building is, that they went into? It looks abandoned.”

“Yeah. For years.”

“Why would somebody build a big building here, on some deserted island in Costa Rica?” she said.

“Maybe they were doing something secret.”

“Or dangerous,” she said.

“Yeah. Or that.” The idea of danger was both titillating and unnerving. He felt far from home.

“I wonder what they were doing?” she said. Still eating, she got up off the couch and went to look out the window. “Sure is a big place. Huh,” she said. “That’s weird.”

“What is?”

“Look out here. That building is all overgrown, like nobody’s been there for years and years. And this field is all grown up, too. The grass is pretty high.”

“Yes …”

“But right down here,” she said, pointing near the trailer, “there’s a clear path.”

Chewing, Arby came over and looked. She was right. Just a few yards from their trailer, the grass had been trampled down, and was yellowed. In many places, bare earth showed through. It was a narrow but distinct trail, coming in from the left, going off to the right, across the open clearing.

“So,” Kelly said. “If nobody’s been here for years, what made the trail?”

“Has to be animals,” he said. It was all he could think of. “Must be a game trail.”

“Like what animals?”

“I don’t know. Whatever’s here. Deer or something.”

“I haven’t seen any deer.”

He shrugged. “Maybe goats. You know, wild goats, like they have in Hawaii.”

“The trail’s too wide for deer or goats.”

“Maybe there’s a whole herd of wild goats.”

“Too wide,” Kelly said. She shrugged, and turned away from the window. She went back to the refrigerator. “I wonder if there’s anything for dessert.”

Mention of dessert gave him a sudden thought. He went to the compartment above the bed, climbed up, and poked around.

“What’re you doing?” she said.

“Checking my pack.”

“For what?”

“I think I forgot my toothbrush.”

“So?”

“I won’t be able to brush my teeth.”

“Arb,” she said. “Who cares?”

“But I always brush my teeth.…”

“Be daring,” Kelly said. “Live a little.”

Arby sighed. “Maybe Dr. Thorne brought an extra one.” He came back and sat down on the couch beside Kelly. She folded her arms across her chest and shook her head.

“No dessert?”

“Nothing. Not even frozen yogurt. Adults. They never plan right.”

“Yeah. That’s true.”

Arby yawned. It was warm in the trailer. He felt sleepy. Lying huddled in that compartment for the last twelve hours, shivering and cramped, he hadn’t slept at all. Now he was suddenly tired.

He looked at Kelly, and she yawned, too. “Want to go outside? Wake us up?”

“We should probably wait here,” he said.

“If I do, I’m afraid I’ll go to sleep,” Kelly said.

Arby shrugged. Sleep was overtaking him fast. He went back to the living compartment, and crawled onto the mattress beside the window. Kelly followed him back.

“I’m not going to sleep,” she said.

“Fine, Kel.” His eyes were heavy. He realized he couldn’t keep them open.

“But”—she yawned again—“maybe I’ll just lie down for a minute.”

He saw her stretch out on the bed opposite him, and then his eyes closed, and he was immediately asleep. He dreamed he was back in the airplane, feeling the gentle rocking motion, hearing the deep rumble of the engines. He slept lightly, and at one moment woke up, convinced that the trailer actually was rocking, and that there really was a low rumbling sound, coming from right outside the window. But almost immediately he was asleep again, and now he dreamed of dinosaurs, Kelly’s dinosaurs, and in his light sleep there were two animals, so huge that he could not see their heads through the window, only their thick scaly legs as they thumped on the ground and walked past the trailer. But in his dream the second animal paused, and bent over, and the big head peered in curiously through the window, and Arby realized that he was seeing the giant head of a Tyrannosaurus rex, the great jaws working, the white teeth glinting in the sunlight, and in his dream he watched it all calmly, and slept on.

Interior

Two large swinging glass doors at the front of the main building led into a darkened lobby beyond. The glass was scratched and dirty, the chrome door-handles pitted with corrosion. But it was clear that the dust, debris, and dead leaves in front of the doorway had been disturbed in twin arcs.

“Somebody’s opened these doors recently,” Eddie said.

“Yes,” Thorne said. “Somebody wearing Asolo boots.” He opened the door. “Shall we?”

They stepped into the building. Inside, the air was hot and still and fetid. The lobby was small and unimpressive. A reception counter directly ahead was once covered with gray fabric, now overgrown with a dark, lichen-like growth. On the wall behind was a row of chrome letters that said “We Make The Future,” but the words were obscured by a tangle of vines. Mushrooms and fungi sprouted from the carpet. Over to the right, they saw a waiting area, with a coffee table, and two long couches.

One of the couches was speckled with crusty brown mold; the other had been covered with a plastic tarp. Next to this couch was what was left of Levine’s green backpack, with several deep tears in the fabric. On the coffee table were two empty plastic Evian bottles, a satellite phone, a pair of muddy hiking shorts, and several crumpled candy-bar wrappers. A bright-green snake slithered quickly away as they approached.

“So this is an InGen building?” Thorne said, looking at the wall sign.

“Absolutely,” Malcolm said.

Eddie bent over Levine’s backpack, ran his fingers along the tears in the fabric. As he did so, a large rat jumped out from the pack.

“Jesus!”

The rat scurried away, squeaking. Eddie looked cautiously inside the pack. “I don’t think anybody’s going to want the rest of these candy bars,” he said. He turned to the pile of clothes. “You getting a reading from this?” Some of the expedition clothes had micro-sensors sewn into them.

“No,” Thorne said, moving his hand monitor. “I have a reading, but … it seems to be coming from there.”

He pointed to a set of metal doors beyond the reception desk, leading into the building beyond. The doors had once been bolted shut and locked with rusted padlocks. But the padlocks now lay on the floor, broken open.

“Let’s go get him,” Eddie said, heading for the doors. “What kind of a snake do you think that was?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was it poisonous?”

“I don’t know.”

The doors opened with a loud creak. The three men found themselves in a blank corridor, with broken windows along one wall, and dried leaves and debris on the floor. The walls were dirty and darkly stained in several places with what looked like blood. They saw several doors opening off the corridor. None appeared to be locked.

Plants were growing up through rips in the carpeted floor. Near the windows, where it was light, vines grew thickly over the cracked walls. More vines hung down from the ceiling. Thorne and the others headed down the hallway. There was no sound except their feet crunching on the dried leaves.

“Getting stronger,” Thorne said, looking at his monitor. “He must be somewhere in this building.”

Thorne opened the first door he came to, and saw a plain office: a desk and chair, a map of the island on the wall. A desk lamp, toppled over from the weight of tangled vines. A computer monitor, with a film of mold. At the far end of the room, light filtered through a grimy window.

They went down the hall to the second door, and saw an almost identical office: similar desk and chair, similar window at the far side of the room.

Eddie grunted. “Looks like we’re in an office building,” he said.

Thorne went on. He opened the third door, and then the fourth. More offices.

Thorne opened the fifth door, and paused.

He was in a conference room, dirty with leaves and debris. There were animal droppings on the long wooden table in the center of the room. The window on the far side was dusty. Thorne was drawn to a large map, which covered one whole wall of the conference room. There were pushpins of various colors stuck in the map. Eddie came in, and frowned.

Beneath the map was a chest of drawers. Thorne tried to open them, but they were all locked. Malcolm walked slowly into the room, looking around, taking it in. “What’s this map mean?” Eddie said. “You have any idea what the pins are?”

Malcolm glanced at it. “Twenty pins in four different colors. Five pins of each color. Arranged in a pentagon, or anyway a five-pronged pattern of some kind, going to all parts of the island. I’d say it looks like a network.”

“Didn’t Arby say there was a network on this island?”

“Yes, he did.… Interesting …”

“Well, never mind that now,” Thorne said. He went back into the hallway again, following the signal from his hand unit. Malcolm closed the door behind them, and they continued on. They saw more offices, but no longer opened the doors. They followed the signal from Levine.

At the end of the corridor was a pair of sliding glass doors marked NO ADMITTANCE AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Thorne peered through the glass, but he could not see much beyond. He had the sense of a large space, and complex machinery, but the glass was dusty and streaked with grime. It was difficult to see.

Thorne said to Malcolm, “You really think you know what this building was for?”

“I know exactly what it was for,” Malcolm said. “It’s a manufacturing plant for dinosaurs.”

“Why,” Eddie said, “would anybody want that?”

“Nobody would,” Malcolm said. “That’s why they kept it a secret.”

“I don’t get it,” Eddie said.

Malcolm smiled. “Long story,” he said.

He slipped his hands between the doors, and tried to pull them open, but they remained shut fast. He grunted, straining with effort. And then suddenly, with a metallic screech, they slid apart.

They stepped into the darkness beyond.

Their flashlights shone down an inky corridor, as they moved forward. “To understand this place, you have to go back ten years, to a man named John Hammond, and an animal called the quagga.”

“The what?”

“The quagga,” Malcolm said, “is an African mammal, rather like a zebra. It became extinct in the last century. But in the 1980s, somebody used the latest DNA-extraction techniques on a piece of quagga hide, and recovered a lot of DNA. So much DNA that people began to talk about bringing the quagga back to life. And if you could bring the quagga back to life, why not other extinct animals? The dodo? The saber-toothed tiger? Or even a dinosaur?”

“Where could you get dinosaur DNA?” Thorne said.

“Actually,” Malcolm said, “paleontologists have been finding fragments of dinosaur DNA for years. They never said much about it, because they never had enough material to use it as a classification tool. So it didn’t seem to have any value; it was just a curiosity.”

“But to re-create an animal, you’d need more than DNA fragments,” Thorne said. “You’d need the whole strand.”

“That’s right,” Malcolm said. “And the man who figured out how to get it was a venture capitalist named John Hammond. He reasoned that, when dinosaurs were alive, insects probably bit them, and sucked their blood, just as insects do today. And some of those insects would afterward land on a branch, and be trapped in sticky sap. And some of that sap would harden into amber. Hammond decided that, if you drilled into insects preserved in amber, and extracted the stomach contents, you would eventually get some dino-DNA.”

“And did he?”

“Yes. He did. And he started InGen, to develop this discovery. Hammond was a hustler, and his true talent was raising money. He figured out how to get enough money to do the research to go from a DNA strand to a living animal. Sources of funding weren’t immediately apparent. Because, although it would be exciting to re-create a dinosaur, it wasn’t exactly a cure for cancer.

“So he decided to make a tourist attraction. He planned to recover the cost of the dinosaurs by putting them in a kind of zoo or theme park, where he would charge admission.”

“Are you joking?” Thorne said.

“No. Hammond actually did it. He built his park on an island called Isla Nublar, north of here, and he planned to open it to the public in late 1989. I went to see the place myself, shortly before it was scheduled to open. But it turned out Hammond had problems,” Malcolm said. “The park systems broke down, and the dinosaurs got free. Some visitors were killed. Afterward, the park and all its dinosaurs were destroyed.”

They passed a window where they could look out over the plain, at the herds of dinosaurs browsing by the river. Thorne said, “If they were all destroyed, what’s this island?”

“This island,” Malcolm said, “is Hammond’s dirty little secret. It’s the dark side of his park.”

They continued down the corridor.

“You see,” Malcolm said, “visitors to Hammond’s park at Isla Nublar were shown a very impressive genetics lab, with computers and gene sequencers, and all sorts of facilities for hatching and growing young dinosaurs. Visitors were told that the dinosaurs were created right there at the park. And the laboratory tour was entirely convincing.

“But actually, Hammond’s tour skipped several steps in the process. In one room, he showed you dinosaur DNA being extracted. In the next room, he showed you eggs about to hatch. It was very dramatic, but how had he gotten from DNA to a viable embryo? You never saw that critical step. It was just presented as having happened, between rooms.

“The fact was, Hammond’s whole show was too good to be true. For example, he had a hatchery where the little dinosaurs pecked their way out of the eggs, while you watched in amazement. But there were never any problems in the hatchery. No stillbirths, no deformities, no difficulties of any sort. In Hammond’s presentation, this dazzling technology was carried off without a hitch.

“And if you think about it, it couldn’t possibly be true. Hammond was claiming to manufacture extinct animals using cutting-edge technology. But with any new manufacturing technology, initial yields are low: on the order of one percent or less. So in fact, Hammond must have been growing thousands of dinosaur embryos to get a single live birth. That implied a giant industrial operation, not the spotless little laboratory we were shown.”

“You mean this place,” Thorne said.

“Yes. Here, on another island, in secret, away from public scrutiny, Hammond was free to do his research, and deal with the unpleasant truth behind his beautiful little park. Hammond’s little genetic zoo was a showcase. But this island was the real thing. This is where the dinosaurs were made.”

“If the animals at the zoo were destroyed,” Eddie said, “how come they weren’t destroyed on this island, too?”

“A critical question,” Malcolm said. “We should know the answer in a few minutes.” He shone his light down the tunnel; it glinted off glass walls. “Because, if I am not mistaken,” he said, “the first of the manufacturing bays is just ahead.”

Arby

Arby awoke, sitting upright in bed, blinking his eyes in the morning light that streamed in through the trailer windows. In the next bunk, Kelly was still asleep, snoring loudly.

He looked out the window at the entrance to the big building, and saw that the adults were gone. The Explorer was standing by the entrance, but there was no one inside the car. Their trailer sat isolated in the clearing of tall grass. Arby felt entirely alone—frighteningly alone—and a sudden sense of panic made his heart pound. He never should have come here, he thought. The whole idea was stupid. And worst of all, it had been his plan. The way they had huddled together in the trailer, and then had gone back to Thorne’s office. And Kelly had talked to Thorne, so that Arby could steal the key. The way he had set up a delayed radio message to be transmitted to Thorne so that Thorne would think they were still in Woodside. Arby had felt very clever at the time, but now he regretted it all. He decided that he had to call Thorne immediately. He had to turn himself in. He was filled with an overwhelming desire to confess.

He needed to hear somebody’s voice. That was the truth.

He walked from the back of the trailer, where Kelly was sleeping, to the front, and turned on the ignition key in the dashboard. He picked up the radio handset and said, “This is Arby. Is anybody there? Over. This is Arby.”

But nobody answered. After a moment, he looked at the dashboard systems monitor, which registered all the systems that were operative. He didn’t see anything about communications. It occurred to him that the communications system was probably hooked into the computer. He decided to turn the computer on.

So he went back to the middle of the trailer, unstrapped the keyboard, plugged it in, and turned the computer on. There was a menu screen that said “Thorne Field Systems” and underneath that a listing of subsystems inside the trailer. One of them was radio communications. So he clicked on that, and turned it on.

The computer screen showed a scrambled hash of static. At the bottom was a command line that read: “Multiple Frequency Inputs Received. Do you want to Autotune?”

Arby didn’t know what that meant, but he was fearless around computers. Autotune sounded interesting. Without hesitation, he typed “Yes.”

The static scramble remained on the screen, while numbers rolled at the bottom. He guessed he was seeing frequencies in megahertz. But he didn’t really know.

And then, suddenly, the screen went blank, except for a single flashing word in the upper-left corner:

He paused, frowning. That was odd. Apparently he was required to log into the trailer’s computer system. That meant he would need a password. He tried: THORNE.

Nothing happened.

He waited a moment, then tried Thorne’s initials: JT.

Nothing.

LEVINE.

Nothing.

THORNE FIELD SYSTEMS.

Nothing.

TFS.

Nothing.

FIELD.

Nothing.

USER.

Nothing.

Well, he thought, at least the system hadn’t dumped him out. Most networks logged you off after three wrong tries. But apparently Thorne hadn’t designed any security features into this one. Arby would never have made it this way. The system was too patient and helpful.

He tried: HELP.

The cursor moved to another line. There was a pause. The drives whirred.

“Action,” he said, rubbing his hands.

Laboratory

As Thorne’s eyes adjusted to the low light, he saw they were standing inside an enormous space, consisting of row after row of rectangular stainless-steel boxes, each fitted with a tangled maze of plastic tubing. Everything was dusty; many of the boxes were knocked over.

“The first rows,” Malcolm said, “are Nishihara gene sequencers. And beyond are the automatic DNA synthesizers.”

“It’s a factory,” Eddie said. “It’s like agribusiness or something.”

“Yes, it is.”

At the corner of the room was a printer, with some loose sheets of yellowing paper lying beside it. Malcolm picked up one, and glanced at it.

“It’s a reference to a computer database,” Malcolm said. “For some dinosaur blood factor. Something to do with red cells.”

“And is that the sequence?”

“No,” Malcolm said. He started shuffling through the papers. “No, the sequence should be a series of nucleotides.… Here.”

He picked up another sheet of paper.

SEQUENCE

“Does this have something to do with why the animals survived?” Thorne said.

“I’m not sure,” Malcolm said. Was this sheet related to the final days of the manufacturing facility? Or was it just something that a worker printed out years ago, and somehow left behind?

He looked around by the printer, and found a shelved stack of sheets. Pulling them out, he discovered that they were memos. They were on faded blue paper, and they were all brief.

From: CC/D-P. Jenkins

To: H. Wu

Excess dopamine in Alpha 5 means D1 receptor still not functioning with desired avidity. To minimize aggressive behavior in finished orgs must try alternate genetic backgrounds. We need to start this today.

And again:

From: CC/D

To: H. Wu/Sup

Isolated glycogen synthase kinase-3 from Xenopus may work better than mammalian GSK-3 alpha/beta currently in use. Anticipate more robust establishment of dorsoventral polarity and less early embryo wastage. Agree?

Malcolm looked at the next one:

From: Backes

To: H. Wu/Sup

Short protein fragments may be acting as prions. Sourcing doubtful but suggest halt all exogenous protein for carniv. orgs until origin is cleared up. Disease cannot continue!

Thorne looked over his shoulder. “Seems like they had problems,” he said.

“Undoubtedly they did,” Malcolm said. “It would be impossible not to have them. But the question is …”

He drifted off, staring at the next memo, which was longer.

INGEN PRODUCTION UPDATE 10/10/88

From: Lori Ruso

To: All Personnel

Subject: Low Production Yields

Recent episodes of wastage of successful live births in the period 24–72 hours post-hatching have been traced to contamination from Escherichia coli bacteria. These have cut production yields by 60%, and arise from inadequate sterile precautions by floor personnel, principally during Process H (Egg Maintenance Phase, Hormone Enhancement 2G/H).

Komera swing arms have been replaced and re-sleeved on robots 5A and 7D, but needle replacement must still be done daily in accordance with sterile conditions (General Manual: Guideline 5–9).

During the next production cycle (10/12–10/26) we will sacrifice every tenth egg at H Step to test for contamination. Begin set-asides at once. Report all errors. Stop the line whenever necessary until this is cleared up.

“They had problems with infection, and contamination of the production line,” Malcolm said. “And maybe other sources of contamination as well. Look at this.”

He handed Thorne the next memo:

INGEN PRODUCTION UPDATE 12/18/88

From: H. Wu

To: All Personnel

Subject: DX: TAG AND RELEASE

Live births will be fitted with the new Grumbach field tags at the earliest viable interval. Formula or other feeding within the laboratory confines will no longer be done. The release program is now fully operational and tracking networks are activated to monitor.

Thorne said, “Does this mean what I think it means?”

“Yes,” Malcolm said. “They were having trouble keeping the newborn animals alive, so they tagged them and released them.”

“And kept track of them on some kind of network?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“They set dinosaurs loose on this island?” Eddie said. “They must have been crazy.”

“Desperate, is more like it,” Malcolm said. “Just imagine: here’s this huge expensive high-tech process, and in the end the animals are getting sick and dying. Hammond must have been furious. So they decided to get the animals out of the laboratory, and into the wild.”

“But why didn’t they find the cause of the sickness, why didn’t they—”

“Commercial process,” Malcolm said. “It’s all about results. And I’m sure they thought they were keeping track of the animals, they could get them back anytime they wanted. And don’t forget, it must have worked. They must have put the animals into the field, then collected them after a while, when they were older, and shipped them to Hammond’s zoo.”

“But not all of them.…”

“We don’t know everything yet,” Malcolm said. “We don’t know what happened here.”

They went through the next doorway, and found themselves in a small, bare room, with a central bench, and lockers on the walls. Signs said OBSERVE STERILE PRECAUTIONS and MAINTAIN SK4 STANDARDS. At the end of the room was a cabinet with stacks of yellowing gowns and caps. Eddie said, “It’s a changing room.”

“Looks like it,” Malcolm said. He opened a locker; it was empty, except for a pair of men’s shoes. He opened several other lockers. They were all empty. Inside one, a sheet of paper was taped:

Safety Is Everybody’s Business!

Report Genetic Anomalies!

Dispose of Biowaste Properly!

Halt the Spread of DX Now!

“What’s DX?” Eddie said.

“I think,” Malcolm said, “it’s the name for this mysterious disease.”

At the far end of the changing room were two doors. The right-hand door was pneumatic, operated by a rubber foot-panel set in the floor. But that door was locked, so they went through the left door, which opened freely.

They found themselves in a long corridor, with floor-to-ceiling glass panels along the right wall. The glass was scratched and dirty, but they peered through it into the room beyond, which was unlike anything Thorne had ever seen.

The space was vast, the size of a football field. Conveyor belts crisscrossed the room at two levels, one very high, the other at waist level. At various stations around the room, clusters of large machinery, with intricate tubing and swing arms, stood beside the belts.

Thorne shone his light on the conveyor belts. “An assembly line,” he said.

“But it looks untouched, like it’s still ready to go,” Malcolm said. “There are a couple of plants growing through the floor over there, but, overall, remarkably clean.”

“Too clean,” Eddie said.

Thorne shrugged. “If it’s a clean-room environment, then it’s probably air-sealed,” he said. “I guess it just stayed the way it was years ago.”

Eddie shook his head. “For years? Doc, I don’t think so.”

“Then what do you think explains it?”

Malcolm frowned, peering through the glass. How was it possible for a room this size to remain clean after so many years? It didn’t make any—

“Hey!” Eddie said.

Malcolm saw it, too. It was in the far corner of the room, a small blue box halfway up the wall, cables running into it. It was obviously some kind of electrical junction box. Mounted on the box was a tiny red light.

It was glowing.

“This place has power!”

Thorne moved close to the glass, looking through with them. “That’s impossible. It must be some kind of stored charge, or a battery.…”

“After five years? No battery can last that long,” Eddie said. “I’m telling you, Doc, this place has power!”

Arby stared at the monitor as white lettering slowly printed across the screen:

ARE YOU FIRST-TIME USER OF THE NETWORK?

He typed:

YES.

There was another pause.

He waited.

More letters slowly appeared:

YOUR FULL NAME?

He typed in his name.

DO YOU WANT A PASSWORD ISSUED TO YOU?

You’re kidding, he thought. This was going to be a snap. It was almost disappointing. He really thought Dr. Thorne would have been more clever. He typed:

YES.

After a moment:

YOUR NEW PASSWORD IS VIG/&*849/. PLEASE MAKE A NOTE OF IT.

Sure thing, Arby thought. You bet I will. There was no paper on the desk in front of him; he patted his pockets, found a scrap of paper, and wrote it down.

PLEASE RE-ENTER YOUR PASSWORD NOW.

He typed in the series of characters and numbers.

There was another pause, and then more printing appeared across the screen. The speed of the printing was oddly slow, and halting at times. After all this time, maybe the system wasn’t working very—

THANK YOU. PASSWORD CONFIRMED.

The screen flashed, and suddenly turned dark blue. There was an electronic chime.

And then Arby’s jaw dropped open as he stared at the screen, which read:

INTERNATIONAL GENETIC TECHNOLOGIES
SITE B
LOCAL NODE NETWORK SERVICES

It didn’t make any sense. How could there be a Site B network? InGen had closed Site B years ago. Arby had already read the documents. And InGen was out of business, long since bankrupt. What network? he thought. And how had he managed to get on it? The trailer wasn’t connected to anything. There were no cables or anything. So it must be a radio network, already on the island. Somehow he’d managed to log onto it. But how could it exist? A radio network needed power, and there was no power here.

Arby waited.

Nothing happened. The words just sat there on the screen. He waited for a menu to come up, but one never did. Arby began to think that perhaps the system was defunct. Or hung up. Maybe it just let you log on, and then nothing happened after that.

Or maybe, he thought, he was supposed to do something. He did the simplest thing, which was to press RETURN.

He saw:

REMOTE NETWORK SERVICES AVAILABLE

CURRENT WORKFILES	Last Modified
R/Research	10/02/89
P/Production	10/05/89
F/Field Rec	10/09/89
M/Maintenance	11/12/89
A/Administration	11/11/89
STORED DATAFILES
R1/Research (AV-AD)	11/01/89
R2/Research (GD-99)	11/12/89
P/Production (FD-FN)	11/09/89
VIDEO NETWORK
A, 1-20 CCD	NDC.1.1

So it really was an old system: files hadn’t been modified for years. Wondering if it still worked, he clicked on VIDEO NETWORK. And to his amazement, he saw the screen begin to fill with tiny video images. There were fifteen in all, crowding the screen, showing views of various parts of the island. Most of the cameras seemed to be mounted high up, in trees or something, and they showed—

He stared.

They showed dinosaurs.

He squinted. It wasn’t possible. These were movies or something he was seeing. Because in one corner he saw a herd of triceratops. In an adjacent square, some green lizard-looking things, in high grass, with just their heads sticking up. In another, a single stegosaurus, ambling along.

They must be movies, he thought. The dinosaur channel.

But then, in another image, Arby saw the two connected trailers standing in the clearing. He could see the black photovoltaic panels glistening on the roof. He almost imagined he could see himself, through the window of the trailer.

Oh, my God, he thought.

And in another image, he saw Thorne and Malcolm and Eddie get quickly into the green Explorer, and drive around the back of the laboratory. And he realized with a shock:

The pictures were all real.

Power

They drove the Explorer to the back of the main building, heading for the power station. On the way, they passed a little village to their right. Thorne saw six plantation-style cottages and a larger building marked “Manager’s Residence.” It was clear that the cottages had once been nicely landscaped, but they were now overgrown, partially retaken by the jungle. In the center of the complex, they saw a tennis court, a drained swimming pool, a small gas pump in front of what looked like a little general store.

Thorne said, “I wonder how many people they had here?”

Eddie said, “How do you know they’re all gone?”

“What do you mean?”

“Doc—they have power. After all these years. There has to be an explanation for it.” Eddie steered the car around the back of the loading bays, and drove toward the power station, directly ahead.

The power station was a windowless, featureless concrete blockhouse, marked only by a corrugated-steel rim for ventilation around the top. The steel vents were long since rusted a uniform brown, with flecks of yellow.

Eddie drove the car around the block, looking for a door. He found it at the back. It was a heavy steel door, with a peeling, painted sign that said: CAUTION HIGH VOLTAGE DO NOT ENTER.

Eddie jumped out of the car, and the others followed. Thorne sniffed the air. “Sulfur,” he said.

“Very strong,” Malcolm said, nodding.

Eddie tugged at the door. “Guys, I got a feeling …”

The door opened suddenly with a clang, banging against the concrete wall. Eddie peered into darkness inside. Thorne saw a dense maze of pipes, a trickle of steam coming out of the floor. The room was extremely hot. There was a loud, constant whirring sound.

Eddie said, “I’ll be damned.” He walked forward, looking at the gauges, many of which were unreadable, the glass thickly coated with yellow. The joints of the pipes were also rimmed with yellow crust. Eddie wiped away some of the crust with his finger. “Amazing,” he said.

“Sulfur?”

“Yeah, sulfur. Amazing.” He turned toward the source of the sound, saw a large circular vent, a turbine inside. The turbine blades, spinning rapidly, were dull yellow.

“And that’s sulfur, too?” Thorne said.

“No,” Eddie said. “That must be gold. Those turbine blades are gold alloy.”

“Gold?”

“Yeah. It would have to be very inert.” He turned to Thorne. “You realize what all this is? It’s incredible. So compact and efficient. Nobody has figured out how to do this. The technology is—”

“You’re saying it’s geothermal?” Malcolm said.

“That’s right,” Eddie said. “They’ve tapped a heat source here, probably gas or steam, which is piped up through the floor over there. Then the heat is used to boil water in a closed cycle—that’s the network of pipes up there—and turn the turbine—there—which makes electric power. Whatever the heat source, geothermal’s almost always corrosive as hell. Most places, maintenance is brutal. But this plant still works. Amazing.”

Along one wall was a main panel, which distributed power to the entire laboratory complex. The panel was flecked with mold, and dented in several spots.

“Doesn’t look like anybody’s been in here in years,” he said. “And a lot of the power grid is dead. But the plant itself is still going—incredible.”

Thorne coughed in the sulfurous air, and walked back into the sunlight. He looked up at the rear of the laboratory. One of the loading bays seemed in good shape, but the other had collapsed. The glass at the rear of the building was shattered.

Malcolm came to stand beside him. “I wonder if an animal hit the building.”

“You think an animal could do that much damage?”

Malcolm nodded. “Some of these dinosaurs weigh forty, fifty tons. A single animal has the mass of a whole herd of elephants. That could easily be damage from an animal, yes. You notice that path, running there? That’s a game trail going past the loading bays, and down the hill. It could have been animals, yes.”

Thorne said, “Didn’t they think of that when they released the animals in the first place?”

“Oh, I’m sure they just planned to release them for a few weeks or months, then round them up when they were still juvenile. I doubt they ever thought they—”

They were interrupted by a crackling electrical hiss, like static. It was coming from inside the Explorer. Behind them, Eddie hurried toward the car, with a worried look.

“I knew it,” Eddie said. “Our communications module is frying. I knew we should have put in the other one.” He opened the door to the Explorer and climbed in the passenger side, picked up the handset, pressed the automatic tuner. Through the windshield, he saw Thorne and Malcolm coming back toward the car.

And then the transmission locked. “—into the car!” said a scratchy voice.

“Who is this?”

“Dr. Thorne! Dr. Malcolm! Get in the car!”

As Thorne arrived, Eddie said, “Doc. It’s that damn kid.”

“What?” Thorne said.

“It’s Arby.”

Over the radio, Arby was saying, “Get in the car! I can see it coming!”

“What’s he talking about?” Thorne said, frowning. “He’s not here, is he? Is he on this island?”

The radio crackled. “Yes, I’m here! Dr. Thorne!”

“But how the hell did he—”

“Dr. Thorne! Get in the car!”

Thorne turned purple with anger. He bunched his fists. “How did that little son of a bitch manage to do this?” He grabbed the handset from Eddie. “Arby, God damn it—”

“It’s coming!”

Eddie said, “What’s he talking about? He sounds completely hysterical.”

“I can see it on the television! Dr. Thorne!”

Malcolm looked around at the jungle. “Maybe we should get in the car,” he said quietly.

“What does he mean, television?” Thorne said. He was furious.

Eddie said, “I don’t know, Doc, but if he’s got a feed in the trailer, we can see it too.” He flicked on the dashboard monitor. He watched as the screen glowed to life.

“That damn kid,” Thorne said. “I’m going to wring his neck.”

“I thought you liked that kid,” Malcolm said.

“I do, but—”

“Chaos at work,” Malcolm said, shaking his head.

Eddie was looking at the monitor.

“Oh shit,” he said.

On the tiny dashboard monitor, they had a view looking straight down at the powerful body of a Tyrannosaurus rex, as it moved up the game trail toward them. Its skin was a mottled reddish brown, the color of dried blood. In dappled sunlight, they could clearly see the powerful muscles of its haunches. The animal moved quickly, without any sign of fear or hesitation.

Staring, Thorne said, “Everybody in the car.”

The men climbed hurriedly in. On the monitor, the tyrannosaur moved out of view of the camera. But, sitting in the Explorer, they could hear it coming. The earth was shaking beneath them, swaying the car slightly.

Thorne said, “Ian? What do you think we should do?”

Malcolm didn’t answer. He was frozen, staring forward, eyes blank.

“Ian?” Thorne said.

The radio clicked. Arby said, “Dr. Thorne, I’ve lost him on the monitor. Can you see him yet?”

“Jesus,” Eddie said.

With astonishing speed the Tyrannosaurus rex burst into view, emerging from the foliage to the right of the Explorer. The animal was immense, the size of a two-storey building, its head rising high above them, out of sight. Yet for such a large creature it moved with incredible speed and agility. Thorne stared in stunned silence, waiting to see what would happen. He felt the car vibrate with each thundering footstep. Eddie moaned softly.

But the tyrannosaur ignored them. Continuing at the same rapid pace, it moved swiftly past the front of the Explorer. They hardly had a chance to see it before its big head and body disappeared into the foliage to the left. Now they saw only the thick counterbalancing tail, some seven feet in the air, swinging back and forth with each footstep as the animal moved on.

So fast! Thorne thought. Fast! The giant animal had emerged, blocked their vision, and then was gone again. He was not accustomed to seeing something that big move so fast. Now there was only the tip of the tail swinging back and forth as the animal hurried away.

Then the tail banged against the front of the Explorer, with a loud metallic clang.

And the tyrannosaur stopped.

They heard a low, uncertain growl from the jungle. The tail swung back and forth in the air again, more tentatively. Soon enough, the tail brushed lightly against the radiator a second time.

Now they saw the foliage to the left rustling and bending, and the tail was gone.

Because the tyrannosaur, Thorne realized, was coming back.

Re-emerging from the jungle, it moved toward the car, until it was standing directly in front of them. It growled again, a deep rumbling sound, and turned its head slightly from side to side to look at this strange new object. Then it bent over, and Thorne could see that the tyrannosaur had something in its mouth; he saw the legs of a creature dangling on both sides of the jaws. Flies buzzed in a thick cloud around the tyrannosaur’s head.

Eddie moaned. “Oh, fuck.”

“Quiet,” Thorne whispered.

The tyrannosaurus snorted, and looked at the car. It bent lower, and sniffed repeatedly, moving its head slightly to the left and right with each inhalation. Thorne realized it was smelling the radiator. It moved laterally, and sniffed the tires. Then it lifted its huge head slowly, until its eyes rose above the surface of the hood. It stared at them through the windshield. Its eyes blinked. The gaze was cold and reptilian.

Thorne had the distinct impression that the tyrannosaur was looking at them: its eyes shifted from one person to the next. With its blunt nose, it pushed at the side of the car, rocking it slightly, as if testing its weight, measuring it as an opponent. Thorne gripped the steering wheel tightly and held his breath.

And then, abruptly, the tyrannosaur stepped away, and walked to the front of the car. It turned its back on them, lifting its big tail high. The tyrannosaur backed up toward them. They heard the tail scraping across the roof of the car. The rear haunches came closer …

And then the tyrannosaur sat down on the hood, tilting the vehicle, pushing the bumper into the ground with its enormous weight. At first, it did not move, but simply sat there. Then, after a moment, it began to wriggle its hips back and forth in a quick motion, making the metal squeak.

“What the hell?” Eddie said.

The tyrannosaur stood again, the car sprang back up, and Thorne saw thick white paste smeared across the hood. The tyrannosaur immediately moved away, heading down the game trail, disappearing into the jungle.

Behind them, they saw it emerge into the open again, stalk across the open compound. It lumbered behind the convenience store, passed between two of the cottages, and then disappeared from sight again.

Thorne glanced at Eddie, who jerked his head toward Malcolm. Malcolm had not turned to watch the departing tyrannosaur. He was still staring forward, his body tense. “Ian?” Thorne said. He touched him on the shoulder.

Malcolm said, “Is he gone?”

“Yes. He’s gone.”

Ian Malcolm’s body relaxed, his shoulders dropping. He exhaled slowly. His head sagged to his chest. He took a deep breath, and raised his head again. “You’ve got to admit,” he said. “You don’t see that every day.”

“Are you okay?” Thorne said.

“Yeah, sure. I’m fine.” He put his hand on his chest, feeling his heart. “Of course I’m fine. After all, that was just a small one.”

“Small?” Eddie said. “You call that thing small—”

“Yes, for a tyrannosaur. Females are quite a bit larger. There’s sexual dimorphism in tyrannosaurs—the females are bigger than the males. And it’s generally thought they did most of the hunting. But we may find that out for ourselves.”

“Wait a minute,” Eddie said. “What makes you so sure he was a male?”

Malcolm pointed to the hood of the car, where the white paste now gave off a pungent odor. “He scent-marked territory.”

“So? Maybe females can also mark—”

“Very likely they can,” Malcolm said. “But anal scent glands are found only among males. And you saw how he did it.”

Eddie stared unhappily at the hood. “I hope we can get that stuff off,” he said. “I brought some solvents, but I wasn’t expecting, you know … dino musk.”

The radio clicked. “Dr. Thorne,” Arby said. “Dr. Thorne? Is everything all right?”

“Yes, Arby. Thanks to you,” he said.

“Then why are you waiting? Dr. Thorne? Didn’t you see Dr. Levine?”

“Not yet, no.” Thorne reached for his sensor unit, but it had fallen to the floor. He bent over, and picked it up. Levine’s coordinates had changed. “He’s moving.…”

“I know he’s moving. Dr. Thorne?”

“Yes, Arby,” Thorne said. And then he said, “Wait a minute. How do you know he’s moving?”

“Because I can see him,” Arby said. “He’s riding a bicycle.”

Kelly came into the front of the trailer, yawning and pushing her hair back from her face. “Who’re you talking to, Arb?” She stared at the monitor and said, “Hey, pretty neat.”

“I got onto the Site B network,” he said.

“What network?”

“It’s a radio LAN, Kel. For some reason it’s still up.”

“Is that right? But how did—”

“Kids,” Thorne said, over the radio. “If you don’t mind. We’re looking for Levine.”

Arby picked up the handset. “He’s riding a bicycle down a path in the jungle. It’s pretty steep and narrow. I think he’s following the same path as the tyrannosaur.”

Kelly said, “As the what?”

* * *

Thorne put the car in gear, driving away from the power station, toward the worker compound. He went past the gas station, and then between the cottages. He followed the same path the tyrannosaur had taken. The game trail was fairly wide, easy to follow.

“We shouldn’t have those kids here,” Malcolm said, gloomily. “It’s not safe.”

“Not much we can do about it now,” Thorne said. He clicked the radio. “Arby, do you see Levine now?”

The car bounced through what had once been a flower bed, and around the back of the Manager’s Residence. It was a large two-storey building built in a tropical colonial style, with hardwood balconies all around the upper floor. Like the other houses, it was overgrown.

The radio clicked. “Yes, Dr. Thorne. I see him.”

“Where is he?”

“He’s following the tyrannosaur. On his bicycle.”

“Following the tyrannosaur.” Malcolm sighed. “I should never have gotten involved with him.”

“We all agree on that,” Thorne said. He accelerated, driving past a section of broken stone wall which seemed to mark the outer perimeter of the compound. The car plunged on into jungle, following the game trail.

Over the radio, Arby said, “Do you see him yet?”

“Not yet.”

The trail became progressively narrower, twisting as it ran down the hillside. They came around a curve, and suddenly saw a fallen tree blocking the path. The tree had been denuded in the center, its branches stripped and broken—presumably because large animals had repeatedly stepped over it.

Thorne braked to a stop in front of the tree. He got out, and walked around to the back of the Explorer.

“Doc,” Eddie said. “Let me do it.”

“No,” Thorne said. “If anything happens, you’re the only one who can repair the equipment. You’re more important, especially now that we have the kids.”

Standing behind the car, Thorne lifted the motorcycle off the carrier hooks. He swung it down, checked the battery charge, and rolled it to the front of the car. He said to Malcolm, “Give me that rifle,” and slung the rifle around his shoulder.

Thorne took a headset from the dashboard, and put it over his head. He clipped the battery pack to his belt, placed the microphone alongside his cheek. “You two go back to the trailer,” Thorne said. “Take care of the kids.”

“But Doc …” Eddie began.

“Just do it,” Thorne said, and lifted the motorcycle over the fallen tree. He set it down on the other side, and climbed over himself. Then he saw the same pungent, pale secretions on the trunk; it had smeared on his hands. He glanced back at Malcolm, questioningly.

“Marking territory,” Malcolm said.

“Great,” Thorne said. “Just great.” He wiped his hands on his trousers.

Then he got on the motorcycle, and drove off.

Foliage slapped at Thorne’s shoulders and legs as he drove down the game trail, following the tyrannosaur. The animal was somewhere up ahead, but he couldn’t see it. He was driving fast.

The radio headset crackled. Arby said, “Dr. Thorne? I can see you now.”

“Okay,” Thorne said.

It crackled again. “But I can’t see Dr. Levine any more,” Arby said. He sounded worried.

The electric motorcycle made hardly any noise, particularly going downhill. Up ahead, the game trail divided in two. Thorne stopped, leaned over the bike, looking at the muddy path. He saw the footprints of the tyrannosaur, going off to the left. And he saw the thin line of the bicycle tires. Also going off to the left.

He took the left fork, but now he drove more slowly.

Ten yards ahead, Thorne passed the partially eaten leg of a creature, which lay at the side of the path. The leg was old; it was crawling with white maggots and flies. In the morning heat, the sharp smell was nauseating. He continued, but soon saw the skull of a large animal, some of the flesh and green skin still adhering to the bone. It, too, was covered with flies.

Speaking into the microphone, he said, “I’m passing some partial carcasses.…”

The radio crackled. Now he heard Malcolm say, “I was afraid of that.”

“Afraid of what?”

“There may be a nest,” Malcolm said. “Did you notice the carcass that the tyrannosaur had in his jaws? It was scavenged, but he hadn’t eaten it. There’s a good chance he was taking the food home, to a nest.”

“A tyrannosaur nest …” Thorne said.

“I’d be cautious,” Malcolm said.

Thorne slipped the bike into neutral, and rolled the rest of the way down the hill. When the ground leveled out, he climbed off the motorcycle. He could feel the earth vibrate beneath his feet, and from the bushes ahead, he heard a deep rumbling sound, like the purr of a large jungle cat. Thorne looked around. He didn’t see any sign of Levine’s bicycle.

Thorne unshouldered the rifle, and gripped it in sweating hands. He heard the purring growl again, rising and falling. There was something odd about the sound. It took Thorne a moment to realize what it was.

It came from more than one source: more than one big animal, purring beyond the foliage directly ahead.

Thorne bent over, picked up a handful of grass, and released it in the air. The grass blew back toward his legs: he was downwind. He slipped forward through the foliage.

The ferns around him were huge and dense, but up ahead he could see sunlight shining through, from a clearing beyond. The sound of purring was very loud now. There was another sound as well—an odd, squeaking sound. It was high-pitched, and at first sounded almost mechanical, like a squeaking wheel.

Thorne hesitated. Then, very slowly, he lowered a frond. And he stared.

Nest

In the midmorning light, two enormous tyrannosaurs—each twenty feet high—loomed above him. Their reddish skin had a leathery appearance. Their huge heads were fierce-looking, with heavy jaws and large sharp teeth. But somehow here the animals conveyed no sense of menace to Thorne. They moved slowly, almost gently, bending repeatedly over a large circular rampart of dried mud, nearly four feet high. The two adults held bits of red flesh in their jaws as they ducked their heads below the mud wall. This movement was greeted by a frantic high-pitched squeaking sound, which stopped almost immediately. Then, when the adults lifted their heads again, the flesh was gone.

There was no question: this was the nest. And Malcolm had been right: one tyrannosaur was noticeably larger than the other.

In a few moments, the squeaking resumed. It sounded to Thorne like baby birds. The adults continued to duck their heads, feeding the unseen babies. A bit of torn flesh landed on the top of the mud mound. As he watched, Thorne saw an infant tyrannosaur rise into view above the rampart, and start to scramble over the side. The infant was about the size of a turkey, with a large head and very large eyes. Its body was covered with a fluffy red down, which gave it a scraggly appearance. A ring of pale-white down circled its neck. The infant squeaked repeatedly and it crawled awkwardly toward the meat, using its weak forearms. But when it finally reached the carrion, it jabbed, biting the flesh decisively with tiny, sharp teeth.

It was busily eating the food when it screeched in alarm and started to slide down the outer wall of dried mud. Immediately, the mother tyrannosaur dropped her head and intercepted the baby’s fall, then gently nudged the animal back inside the nest. Thorne was impressed by the delicacy of her movements, the attentive way she cared for her young. The father, meanwhile, continued to tear small pieces of meat. Both animals kept up a continuous purring growl, as if to reassure the infants.

As Thorne watched, he shifted his position. His foot stepped on a branch: there was a sharp crack.

Immediately, both adults jerked their heads up.

Thorne froze; he held his breath.

The tyrannosaurs scanned the area around the nest, looking intently in every direction. Their bodies were tense, their heads alert. Their eyes flicked back and forth, accompanied by little head jerks. After a moment, they seemed to relax again. They bobbed their heads up and down, and rubbed their snouts against each other. It seemed to be some kind of ritual movement, almost a dance. Only then did they resume feeding the infants.

When they had calmed down, Thorne slipped away, moving quietly back to the motorcycle. Arby whispered over the headset, “Dr. Thorne. I can’t see you.”

Thorne didn’t answer. He tapped the microphone with his finger, to signal that he had heard.

Arby whispered, “I think I know where Dr. Levine is. He’s off to your left.”

Thorne tapped the mike again, and turned.

To his left, among ferns, he saw a rusted bicycle. It said “Prop. InGen Corp.” It was leaning against a tree.

* * *

Not bad, Arby thought, sitting in the trailer and watching the remote videos as he clicked on them. He now had the monitor divided into quarters; it was a good compromise between lots of views, and images large enough to see.

One of the views looked down from above on the two tyrannosaurs in the secluded clearing. It was midmorning; the sun shone brightly on the muddy, trampled grass of the clearing. In the center he saw a round steep-walled nest of mud. Inside the nest were four mottled white eggs, about the size of footballs. There were also some broken egg fragments, and two baby tyrannosaurs, looking exactly like featherless, squeaking birds. They sat in the nest with their heads turned up like baby birds, mouths gaping wide, waiting to be fed.

Kelly watched the screen and said, “Look how cute they are.” And then she added, “We should be out there.”

Arby didn’t answer her. He was not at all sure he wanted to be any closer. The adults were being very cool about it, but Arby found the idea of these dinosaurs very unnerving in some deep way that he couldn’t analyze. Arby had always found it reassuring to organize, to create order in his life—even arranging the images neatly on the computer monitor was calming to him. But this island was a place where everything was unknown and unexpected. Where you didn’t know what would happen. He found that troubling.

On the other hand, Kelly was excited. She kept making comments about the tyrannosaurs, how big they were, the size of their teeth. She seemed entirely enthusiastic, without any fear at all.

Arby felt annoyed with her.

“Anyway,” she said, “what makes you think you know where Dr. Levine is?”

Arby pointed to the image of the nest, on the monitor. “Watch.”

“I see it.”

“No. Watch, Kel.”

As they stared at the screen, the image moved slightly. It panned to the left, then centered again. “See that?” Arby said.

“So what? Maybe the wind is blowing the camera or something.”

Arby shook his head. “No, Kel. He’s up in the tree. Levine’s moving the camera.”

“Oh.” A pause. She watched again. “You might be right.”

Arby grinned. That was about all he could expect to get from Kelly. “Yeah, I think so.”

“But what’s Dr. Levine doing in the tree?”

“Maybe he’s adjusting the camera.”

They listened to Thorne’s breathing over the radio.

Kelly stared at the four video images, each showing a different view of the island. She sighed. “I can’t wait to get out there,” she said.

“Yeah, me too,” Arby said. But he didn’t mean it. He glanced out the window of the trailer and saw the Explorer coming back, with Eddie and Malcolm. Secretly, he was glad to see them return.

Thorne stood at the base of the tree, looking up. He couldn’t see Levine through the leaves, but he knew he must be somewhere up above, because he was making what seemed to Thorne like a lot of noise. Thorne glanced nervously back at the clearing, screened by intervening foliage. He could still hear the purring; it remained steady, uninterrupted.

Thorne waited. What the hell was Levine doing up in a tree, anyway? He heard rustling in the branches above, and then silence. A grunt. Then more rustling.

And then Levine said aloud, “Oh, shit!” Then a loud crashing sound, the crack of branches, and a howl of pain. And then Levine crashed down on the ground in front of Thorne, landing hard on his back. He rolled over, clutching his shoulder.

“Damn!” he said.

Levine wore muddy khakis that were torn in several places. Behind a three-day growth of beard, his face was haggard and spattered with mud. He looked up as Thorne moved toward him, and grinned.

“You’re the last person I expected to see, Doc,” Levine said. “But your timing is flawless.”

Thorne extended his hand, and Levine started to reach for it, when, from the clearing behind them, the tyrannosaurs gave a deafening roar.

“Oh, no!” Kelly said. On the monitor, the tyrannosaurs were agitated, moving swiftly in circles, raising their heads and bellowing.

“Dr. Thorne! What’s happening?” Arby said.

They heard Levine’s voice, tinny and scratchy on the radio, but they couldn’t make out the words. Eddie and Malcolm came into the trailer. Malcolm took one look at the monitor and said, “Tell them to get out of there right now!”

On the monitor, the two tyrannosaurs had turned their backs to each other, so they were facing outward in a posture of defense. The babies were protected in the center. The adults swung their heavy tails back and forth over the nest, above the babies’ heads. But the tension was palpable.

And then one of the adults bellowed, and charged out of the clearing.

“Dr. Thorne! Dr. Levine! Get out of there!”

Thorne swung his leg over the bike and gripped the rubber handles. Levine jumped on behind, clutched him around the waist. Thorne heard a chilling roar, and looked back to see one of the tyrannosaurs crash through the foliage and charge them. The animal was running at full speed—head low, jaws open, in an unmistakable posture of attack.

Thorne twisted the throttle. The electric motor whirred, the back wheel spun in the mud, not moving.

“Go!” Levine shouted. “Go!”

The tyrannosaur rushed toward them, roaring. Thorne could feel the ground shake. The roar was so loud it hurt his ears. The tyrannosaur was nearly on them, the big head lunging forward, jaws wide open—

Thorne kicked back with his heels, pushing the bike forward. Suddenly the rear wheel caught, throwing up a plume of mud, and the bike roared up the muddy track. He accelerated fast. The motorcycle fished and swerved treacherously on the trail.

Behind him Levine was shouting something, but Thorne didn’t listen. His heart was pounding. The bike jumped across a rut in the path and they almost lost their balance, then regained it, accelerating again. Thorne did not dare look back. He could smell the odor of rotten flesh, could hear the rasping breath of the giant animal in pursuit.…

“Doc! Take it easy!” Levine shouted.

Thorne ignored him. The bike roared up the hill. The foliage slapped at them; mud spit up on their faces and chests. He was pulled over into a rut, then brought the bike back to the center of the trail. He heard another roar, and imagined it was a bit fainter, but—

“Doc!” Levine shouted, leaning close to his ear. “What’re you trying to do, kill us? Doc! We’re alone!”

Thorne came to a flat part of the path, and risked a glance back over his shoulder. Levine was right. They were alone. He saw no sign of the pursuing tyrannosaur, though he still heard it roaring, somewhere in the distance.

He slowed the bike.

“Take it easy,” Levine said, shaking his head. His face was ashen, frightened. “You’re a terrible driver, do you know that? You ought to take some lessons. You almost got us killed there.”

“He was attacking us,” Thorne said angrily. He was familiar with Levine’s critical manner, but right now—

“That’s absurd,” Levine said. “He wasn’t attacking at all.”

“It sure as hell looked like it,” Thorne said.

“No, no, no,” Levine said. “He wasn’t attacking us. The rex was defending his nest. There’s a big difference.”

“I didn’t see any difference,” Thorne said. He pulled the bike to a stop, and glared at Levine.

“In point of fact,” Levine said, “if the rex had decided to chase you, we’d be dead right now. But he stopped almost immediately.”

“He did?” Thorne said.

“There’s no question about it,” Levine said, in his pedantic manner. “The rex only intended to scare us off, and defend his territory. He’d never leave the nest unguarded, unless we took something, or disrupted the nest. I’m sure he’s back there with his mate right now, hovering over the eggs, not going anywhere.”

“Then I guess we’re lucky he’s a good parent,” Thorne said, gunning the motor.

“Of course he’s a good parent,” Levine continued. “Any fool could tell that. Didn’t you see how thin he was? He’s been neglecting his own nourishment to feed his offspring. Probably been doing it for weeks. A Tyrannosaurus rex is a complex animal, with complex hunting behavior. And he has complex childrearing behavior as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if adult tyrannosaurs have an extended parenting role that lasts for months. He may teach his offspring to hunt, for example. Start by bringing in small wounded animals, and letting the youngsters finish them off. That kind of thing. It’ll be interesting to find out exactly what he does. Why are we waiting here?”

Through Thorne’s earpiece, the radio crackled. Malcolm said, “It would never occur to him to thank you for saving his life.”

Thorne grunted. “Evidently not,” he said.

Levine said, “Who are you talking to? Is it Malcolm? Is he here?”

“Yes,” Thorne said.

“He’s agreeing with me, isn’t he,” Levine said.

“Not exactly,” Thorne said, shaking his head.

“Look, Doc,” Levine said, “I’m sorry if you got upset. But there was no reason for it. The truth is, we were never in danger—except from your bad driving.”

“Fine. That’s fine.” Thorne’s heart was still pounding in his chest. He took a deep breath, swung the bike to the left, and headed down a wider path, back toward their camp.

Sitting behind him, Levine said, “I’m very glad to see you, Doc. I really am.”

Thorne didn’t answer. He followed the path downward, through foliage. They descended to the valley, picking up speed. Soon they saw the trailers in the clearing below. Levine said, “Good. You brought everything. And the equipment’s working? Everything in good condition?”

“It all seems to be fine.”

“Perfect,” Levine said. “Then this is just perfect.”

“Maybe not,” Thorne said.

Through the back window of the trailer, Kelly and Arby were waving cheerfully through the glass.

“You’re kidding,” Levine said.

FOURTH CONFIGURATION

“Approaching the chaotic edge, elements show internal conflict. An unstable and potentially lethal region.”

IAN MALCOLM

Levine

They came running across the clearing, shouting, “Dr. Levine! Dr. Levine! You’re safe!” They hugged Levine, who smiled despite himself. He turned to Thorne.

“Doc,” Levine said. “This was very unwise.”

“Why don’t you explain that to them?” Thorne said. “They’re your students.”

Kelly said, “Don’t be mad, Dr. Levine.”

“It was our decision,” Arby explained to Levine. “We came on our own.”

“On your own?” Levine said.

“We thought you’d need help,” Arby said. “And you did.” He turned to Thorne.

Thorne nodded. “Yes. They’ve helped us.”

“And we promise, we won’t get in the way,” Kelly said. “You go ahead and do whatever you have to do, and we will just—”

“The kids were worried about you,” Malcolm said, coming up to Levine. “Because they thought you were in trouble.”

“Anyway, what’s the big rush?” Eddie said. “I mean, you build all these vehicles, and then you leave without them—”

“I had no choice,” Levine said. “The government has an outbreak of some new encephalitis on its hands. They’ve decided it’s related to the occasional dinosaur carcass that washes up there. Of course, the whole idea is idiotic, but that won’t stop them from destroying every animal on this island the minute they find out about it. I had to get here first. Time is short.”

“So you came here alone,” Malcolm said.

“Nonsense, Ian. Stop pouting. I was going to call you, as soon as I verified this was the island. And I didn’t come here alone. I had a guide named Diego, a local man who swore he had been on this island as a kid, years before. And he seemed entirely knowledgeable. He led me up the cliff without any problem. And everything was going just fine, until we were attacked at the stream, and Diego—”

“Attacked?” Malcolm said. “By what?”

“I didn’t really see what it was,” Levine said. “It happened extremely fast. The animal knocked me down, and tore the backpack, and I don’t really know what happened after that. Possibly the shape of my pack confused it, because I got up and started running again, and it didn’t chase me.”

Malcolm was staring at him. “You were damn lucky, Richard.”

“Yes, well, I ran for a long time. When I looked back, I was alone in the jungle. And lost. I didn’t know what to do, so I climbed a tree. That seemed like a good idea—and then, around nightfall, the velociraptors showed up.”

“Velociraptors?” Arby said.

“Small carnivores,” Levine said. “Basic theropod body shape, long snout, binocular vision. Roughly two meters tall, weighing perhaps ninety kilos. Very fast, intelligent, nasty little dinosaurs, and they travel in packs. And last night there were eight of them, jumping all around my tree, trying to get to me. All night long, jumping and snarling, jumping and snarling … I didn’t get any sleep at all.”

“Aw, that’s a shame,” Eddie said.

“Look,” Levine said crossly. “It’s not my problem if—”

Thorne said, “You spent the night in the tree?”

“Yes, and in the morning the raptors had gone. So I came down and started looking around. I found the lab, or whatever it is. Clearly, they abandoned it in a hurry, leaving some animals behind. I went through the building, and discovered that there is still power—some systems are still going, all these years later. And, most important, there is a network of security cameras. That’s a very lucky break. So I decided to check on those cameras, and I was hard at work when you people barged in—”

“Wait a minute,” Eddie said. “We came here to rescue you.”

“I don’t know why,” Levine said. “I certainly never asked you to.”

Thorne said, “It sounded like you did, over the phone.”

“That is a misunderstanding,” Levine said. “I was momentarily upset, because I couldn’t work the phone. You’ve made that phone too complicated, Doc. That’s the problem. So: shall we get started?”

Levine paused. He looked at the angry faces all around him. Malcolm turned to Thorne. “A great scientist,” he said, “and a great human being.”

“Look,” Levine said, “I don’t know what your problem is. The expedition was going to come to this island sooner or later. In this instance, sooner is better. Everything has turned out quite well, and, frankly, I don’t see any reason to discuss it further. This is not the time for petty bickering. We have important things to do—and I think we should get started. Because this island is an extraordinary opportunity, and it isn’t going to last forever.”

Dodgson

Lewis Dodgson sat hunched in a dark corner of the Chesperito Cantina in Puerto Cortés, nursing a beer. Beside him, George Baselton, the Regis Professor of Biology at Stanford, was enthusiastically devouring a plate of huevos rancheros. The egg yolks ran yellow across green salsa. It made Dodgson sick just to look at it. He turned away, but he could still hear Baselton licking his lips, noisily.

There was no one else in the bar, except for some chickens clucking around the floor. Every so often, a young boy would come to the door, throw a handful of rocks at the chickens, and run away again, giggling. A scratchy stereo played an old Elvis Presley tape through corroded speakers above the bar. Dodgson hummed “Falling in Love With You,” and tried to control his temper. He had been sitting in this dump for damn near an hour.

Baselton finished his eggs, and pushed the plate away. He brought out the small notebook he carried everywhere with him. “Now Lew,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about how to handle this.”

“Handle what?” Dodgson said irritably. “There’s nothing to handle, unless we can get to that island.” While he spoke, he tapped a small photograph of Richard Levine on the edge of the bar table. Turned it over. Looked at the image upside down. Then right side up.

He sighed. He looked at his watch.

“Lew,” Baselton said patiently, “getting to the island is not the important part. The important part is how we present our discovery to the world.”

Dodgson paused. “Our discovery,” he repeated. “I like that, George. That’s very good. Our discovery.”

“Well, that’s the truth, isn’t it?” Baselton said, with a bland smile. “InGen is bankrupt, its technology lost to mankind. A tragic, tragic loss, as I have said many times on television. But under the circumstances, anyone who finds it again has made a discovery. I don’t know what else you would call it. As Henri Poincaré put it—”

“Okay,” Dodgson said. “So we make a discovery. And then what? Hold a press conference?”

“Absolutely not,” Baselton said, looking horrified. “A press conference would appear extremely crass. It would open us up to all sorts of criticism. No, no. A discovery of this magnitude must be treated with decorum. It must be reported, Lew.”

“Reported?”

“In the literature: Nature, I imagine. Yes.”

Dodgson squinted. “You want to announce this in an academic publication?”

“What better way to make it legitimate?” Baselton said. “It’s entirely proper to present our findings to our scholarly peers. Of course it will start a debate—but what will that debate consist of? An academic squabble, professors sniping at professors, which will fill the science pages of the newspapers for three days, until it is pushed aside by the latest news on breast implants. And in those three days, we will have staked our claim.”

“You’ll write it?”

“Yes,” Baselton said. “And later, I think, an article in American Scholar, or perhaps Natural History. A human-interest piece, what this discovery means for the future, what it tells us about the past, all that.…”

Dodgson nodded. He could see that Baselton was correct, and he was reminded once again how much he needed him, and how wise he had been to add him to the team. Dodgson never thought about public reaction. And Baselton thought about nothing else.

“Well, that’s fine,” Dodgson said. “But none of it matters, unless we get to that island.” He glanced at his watch again.

He heard a door open behind him, and Dodgson’s assistant Howard King came in, pulling a heavyset Costa Rican man, with a mustache. The man had a weathered face and a sullen expression.

Dodgson turned on his stool. “Is this the guy?”

“Yes, Lew.”

“What’s his name?”

“Gandoca.”

“Señor Gandoca.” Dodgson held up the photo of Levine. “You know this man?”

Gandoca hardly glanced at the photo. He nodded. “Sí. Señor Levine.”

“That’s right. Señor fucking Levine. When was he here?”

“A few days ago. He left with Dieguito, my cousin. They are not back yet.”

“And where did they go?” Dodgson asked.

“Isla Sorna.”

“Good.” Dodgson drained his beer, pushed the bottle away. “You have a boat?” He turned to King. “Does he have a boat?”

King said, “He’s a fisherman. He has a boat.”

Gandoca nodded. “A fishing boat. Sí.”

“Good. I want to go to Isla Sorna, too.”

“Sí, señor, but today the weather—”

“I don’t care about the weather,” Dodgson said. “The weather will get better. I want to go now.”

“Perhaps later—”

“Now.”

Gandoca spread his hands. “I am very sorry, señor—”

Dodgson said, “Show him the money, Howard.”

King opened a briefcase. It was filled with five thousand colon notes. Gandoca looked, picked up one of the bills, inspected it. He put it back carefully, shifted on his feet a little.

Dodgson said, “I want to go now.”

“Sí, señor,” Gandoca said. “We leave when you are ready.”

“That’s more like it,” Dodgson said. “How long to get to the island?”

“Perhaps two hours, señor.”

“Fine,” Dodgson said. “That’ll be fine.”

The High Hide

“Here we go!”

There was a click as Levine connected the flexible cable to the Explorer’s power winch, and flicked it on. The cable turned slowly in the sunlight.

They had all moved down onto the broad grassy plain at the base of the cliff. The midday sun was high overhead, glaring off the rocky rim of the island. Below, the valley shimmered in midday heat.

There was a herd of hypsilophodons a short distance away; the green gazelle-like animals raised their heads occasionally above the grass to look toward them, every time they heard the clink of metal, as Eddie and the kids laid out the aluminum strut assembly which had been the subject of so much speculation back in California. That assembly now looked like a jumble of thin struts—an oversized version of pickup sticks—lying in the grass of the plain.

“Now we will see,” Levine said, rubbing his hands together.

As the motor turned, the aluminum struts began to move, and slowly lifted into the air. The emerging structure appeared spidery and delicate, but Thorne knew that the cross-bracing would give it surprising strength. Struts unfolding, the structure rose ten feet, then fifteen feet, and finally it stopped. The little house at the top was now just beneath the lowest branches of the nearby trees, which almost concealed it from view. But the scaffolding itself gleamed bright and shiny in the sun.

“Is that it?” Arby said.

“That’s it, yes.” Thorne walked around the four sides, slipping in the locking pins, to hold it upright.

“But it’s much too shiny,” Levine said. “We should have made it matte black.”

Thorne said, “Eddie, we need to hide this.”

“Want to spray it, Doc? I think I brought some black paint.”

Levine shook his head. “No, then it’ll smell. How about those palms?”

“Sure, we can do that.” Eddie walked to a stand of nearby palms, and began to hack away big fronds with his machete.

Kelly stared up at the aluminum strut assembly. “It’s great,” she said. “But what is it?”

“It’s a high hide,” Levine said. “Come on.” And he began to climb the scaffolding.

* * *

The structure at the top was a little house, its roof supported by aluminum bars spaced four feet apart. The floor of the house was also made of aluminum bars, but these were closer together, about six inches apart. Their feet threatened to slip through, so Levine took the first of the bundles of fronds that Eddie Carr was raising on a rope, and used them to make a more complete floor. The remaining fronds he tied to the outside of the house, concealing its structure.

Arby and Kelly stared out at the animals. From their vantage point, they could look across the whole valley. There was a distant herd of apatosaurs, on the other side of the river. A cluster of triceratops browsed to the north. Nearer the water, some duck-billed dinosaurs with long crests rising above their heads moved forward to drink. A low, trumpeting cry from the duckbills floated across the valley toward them: a deep, unearthly sound. A moment later, there was an answering cry, from the forest at the opposite side of the valley.

“What was that?” Kelly said.

“Parasaurolophus,” Levine said. “It’s trumpeting through its nuchal crest. Low-frequency sound carries a long distance.”

To the south, there was a herd of dark-green animals, with large curved protruding foreheads, and a rim of small knobby horns. They looked a little like buffalo. “What do you call those?” Kelly said.

“Good question,” Levine said. “They are most likely Pachycephalosaurus wyomingensis. But it’s difficult to say for sure, because a full skeleton for these animals has never been recovered. Their foreheads are very thick bone, so we’ve found many domed cranial fragments. But this is the first time I’ve ever seen the whole animal.”

“And those heads? What are they for?” Arby said.

“Nobody knows,” Levine said. “Everyone has assumed they’re used for butting, for intraspecies fighting among males. Competition for females, that sort of thing.”

Malcolm climbed up into the hide. “Yes, butting heads,” he said sourly. “Just as you see them now.”

“All right,” Levine said, “so they’re not butting heads at the moment. Perhaps their breeding season is concluded.”

“Or perhaps they don’t do it at all,” Malcolm said, staring at the green animals. “They look pretty peaceful to me.”

“Yes,” Levine said, “but of course that doesn’t mean a thing. African buffalo appear peaceful most of the time, too—in fact, they usually just stand motionless. Yet they’re unpredictable and dangerous animals. We have to presume those domes exist for a reason—even if we’re not seeing it now.”

Levine turned to the kids. “That’s why we made this structure. We want to make round-the-clock observations on the animals,” he said. “To the extent possible, we want a full record of their activities.”

“Why?” Arby said.

“Because,” Malcolm said, “this island presents a unique opportunity to study the greatest mystery in the history of our planet: extinction.”

“You see,” Malcolm said, “when InGen shut down their facility, they did it hastily, and they left some live animals behind. That was five or six years ago. Dinosaurs mature rapidly; most species attain adulthood in four or five years. By now, the first generation of InGen dinosaurs—bred in a laboratory—has attained maturity, and has begun to breed a new generation, entirely in the wild. There is now a complete ecological system on this island, with a dozen or so dinosaur species living in social groups, for the first time in sixty-five million years.”

Arby said, “So why is that an opportunity?”

Malcolm pointed across the plain. “Well, think about it. Extinction is a very difficult research topic. There are dozens of competing theories. The fossil record is incomplete. And you can’t perform experiments. Galileo could climb the tower of Pisa and drop balls to test his theory of gravity. He never actually did it, but he could have. Newton used prisms to test his theory of light. Astronomers observed eclipses to test Einstein’s theory of relativity. Testing occurs throughout science. But how can you test a theory of extinction? You can’t.”

Arby said, “But here …”

“Yes,” Malcolm said. “What we have here is a population of extinct animals artificially introduced into a closed environment, and allowed to evolve all over again. There’s never been anything like it in all history. We already know these animals became extinct once. But nobody knows why.”

“And you expect to find out? In a few days?”

“Yes,” Malcolm said. “We do.”

“How? You don’t expect them to become extinct again, do you?”

“You mean, right before our eyes?” Malcolm laughed. “No, no. Nothing like that. But the point is, for the first time we aren’t just studying bones. We’re seeing live animals, and observing their behavior. I have a theory, and I think that even in a short time, we will see evidence for that theory.”

“What evidence?” Kelly said.

“What theory?” Arby said.

Malcolm smiled at them. “Wait,” he said.

The Red Queen

The apatosaurs had come down to the river in the heat of the day; their graceful curving necks were reflected in the water as they bent to drink. Their long, whip-like tails swung back and forth lazily. Several younger apatosaurs, much smaller than the adults, scampered about in the center of the herd.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Levine said. “The way it all fits together. Just beautiful.” He leaned over the side and shouted to Thorne, “Where’s my mount?”

“Coming up,” Thorne said.

The rope now brought up a heavy wide-based tripod, and a circular mount on top. There were five video cameras atop the mount, and dangling wires leading to solar panels. Levine and Malcolm began to set it up.

“What happens to the video?” Arby said.

“The data gets multiplexed, and we uplink it back to California. By satellite. We’ll also hook into the security network. So we’ll have lots of observation points.”

“And we don’t have to be here?”

“Right.”

“And this is what you call a high hide?”

“Yes. At least, that’s what scientists like Sarah Harding call it.”

Thorne climbed up to join them. The little shelter was now quite crowded, but Levine didn’t seem to notice. He was entirely focused on the dinosaurs; he turned a pair of binoculars on the animals spread across the plain. “Just as we thought,” he said to Malcolm. “Spatial organization. Infants and juveniles in the center of the herd, protective adults on the periphery. The apatosaurs use their tails as defense.”

“That’s the way it looks.”

“Oh, there’s no question about it,” Levine said. He sighed. “It’s so agreeable to be proven right.”

On the ground below, Eddie unpacked the circular aluminum cage, the same one they had seen in California. It was six feet tall and four feet in diameter, constructed of one-inch titanium bars. “What do you want me to do with this?” Eddie said.

“Leave it down there,” Levine said. “That’s where it belongs.”

Eddie set the cage upright in the corner of the scaffolding. Levine climbed down.

“And what’s that for?” Arby said, looking down. “Catching a dinosaur?”

“In point of fact, just the opposite.” Levine clipped the cage to the side of the scaffolding. He swung the door open and shut, testing it. There was a lock in the door. He checked the lock, too, leaving the key in place, with its dangling elastic loop. “It’s a predator cage, like a shark cage,” Levine said. “If you’re down here walking around and anything happens, you can climb in here, and you’ll be safe.”

“In case what happens?” Arby said, with a worried look.

“Actually, I don’t think anything will happen,” Levine said, climbing back up. “Because I doubt the animals will pay any attention to us, or to this little house, once the structure’s been concealed.”

“You mean they won’t see it?”

“Oh, they’ll see it,” Levine said, “but they’ll ignore it.”

“But if they smell us …”

Levine shook his head. “We sited the hide so the prevailing wind is toward us. And you may have noticed these ferns have a distinct smell.” It was a mild, slightly tangy odor, almost like eucalyptus.

Arby fretted. “But suppose they decide to eat the ferns?”

“They won’t,” Levine said. “These are Dicranopterus cyatheoides. They’re mildly toxic and cause a rash in the mouth. In point of fact, there’s a theory that their toxicity first evolved back in the Jurassic, as a defense against dinosaur browsers.”

“That’s not a theory,” Malcolm said. “It’s just idle speculation.”

“There’s some logic behind it,” Levine said. “Plant life in the Mesozoic must have been severely challenged by the arrival of very large dinosaurs. Herds of giant herbivores, each animal consuming hundreds of pounds of plant matter each day, would have wiped out any plants that didn’t evolve some defense—a bad taste, or nettles, or thorns, or chemical toxicity. So perhaps cyatheoides evolved its toxicity back then. And it’s very effective, because contemporary animals don’t eat these ferns, anywhere on earth. That’s why they’re so abundant. You may have noticed.”

“Plants have defenses?” Kelly said.

“Of course they do. Plants evolve like every other form of life, and they’ve come up with their own forms of aggression, defense, and so on. In the nineteenth century, most theories concerned animals—nature red in tooth and claw, all that. But now scientists are thinking about nature green in root and stem. We realize that plants, in their ceaseless struggle to survive, have evolved everything from complex symbiosis with other animals, to signaling mechanisms to warn other plants, to outright chemical warfare.”

Kelly frowned. “Signaling? Like what?”

“Oh, there are many examples,” Levine said. “In Africa, acacia trees evolved very long, sharp thorns—three inches or so—but that only provoked animals like giraffes and antelope to evolve long tongues to get past the thorns. Thorns alone didn’t work. So in the evolutionary arms race, the acacia trees next evolved toxicity. They started to produce large quantities of tannin in their leaves, which sets off a lethal metabolic reaction in the animals that eat them. Literally kills them. At the same time, the acacias also evolved a kind of chemical warning system among themselves. If an antelope begins to eat one tree in a grove, that tree releases the chemical ethylene into the air, which causes other trees in the grove to step up the production of leaf tannin. Within five or ten minutes, the other trees are producing more tannin, making themselves poisonous.”

“And then what happens to the antelope? It dies?”

“Well, not any more,” Levine said, “because the evolutionary arms race continued. Eventually, antelopes learned that they could only browse for a short time. Once the trees started to produce more tannin, they had to stop eating it. And the browsers developed new strategies. For example, when a giraffe eats an acacia tree, it then avoids all the trees downwind. Instead, it moves on to another tree that is some distance away. So the animals have adapted to this defense, too.”

“In evolutionary theory, this is called the Red Queen phenomenon,” Malcolm said. “Because in Alice in Wonderland the Red Queen tells Alice she has to run as fast as she can just to stay where she is. That’s the way evolutionary spirals seem. All the organisms are evolving at a furious pace just to stay in the same balance. To stay where they are.”

Arby said, “And this is common? Even with plants?”

“Oh yes,” Levine said. “In their own way, plants are extremely active. Oak trees, for example, produce tannin and phenol as a defense when caterpillars attack them. A whole grove of trees is alerted as soon as one tree is infested. It’s a way to protect the entire grove—a kind of cooperation among trees, you might say.”

Arby nodded, and looked out from the high hide at the apatosaurs, still by the river below. “So,” Arby said, “is that why the dinosaurs haven’t eaten all the trees off this island? Because those big apatosaurs must eat a lot of plants. They have long necks to eat the high leaves. But the trees hardly look touched.”

“Very good,” Levine said, nodding. “I noticed that myself.”

“Is that because of these plant defenses?”

“Well, it might be,” Levine said. “But I think there is a very simple explanation for why the trees are preserved.”

“What’s that?”

“Just look,” Levine said. “It’s right before your eyes.”

Arby picked up the binoculars and stared at the herds. “What’s the simple explanation?”

“Among paleontologists,” Levine said, “there’s been an interminable debate about why sauropods have long necks. Those animals you see have necks twenty feet long. The traditional belief has been that sauropods evolved long necks to eat high foliage that could not be reached by smaller animals.”

“So?” Arby said. “What’s the debate?”

“Most animals on this planet have short necks,” Levine said, “because a long neck is, well, a pain in the neck. It causes all sorts of problems. Structural problems: how to arrange muscles and ligaments to support a long neck. Behavioral problems: nerve impulses must travel a long way from the brain to the body. Swallowing problems: food has to go a long way from the mouth to the stomach. Breathing problems: air has to be pulled down a long windpipe. Cardiac problems: blood has to be pumped way up to the head, or the animal faints. In evolutionary terms, all this is very difficult to do.”

“But giraffes do it,” Arby said.

“Yes, they do. Although giraffe necks are nowhere near this long. Giraffes have evolved large hearts, and very thick fascia around the neck. In effect, the neck of a giraffe is like a blood-pressure cuff, going all the way up.”

“Do dinosaurs have the same cuff?”

“We don’t know. We assume apatosaurs have huge hearts, perhaps three hundred pounds or more. But there is another possible solution to the problem of pumping blood in a long neck.”

“Yes?”

“You’re looking at it right now,” Levine said.

Arby clapped his hands. “They don’t raise their necks!”

“Correct,” Levine said. “At least, not very often, or for long periods. Of course, right now the animals are drinking, so their necks are down, but my guess is that if we watch them for an extended period we’ll find they don’t spend much time with their necks raised high.”

“And that’s why they don’t eat the leaves on the trees!”

“Right.”

Kelly frowned. “But if their long necks aren’t used for eating, then why did they evolve them in the first place?”

Levine smiled. “There must be a good reason,” he said. “I believe it has to do with defense.”

“Defense? Long necks?” Arby stared. “I don’t get it.”

“Keep looking,” Levine said. “It’s really rather obvious.”

Arby peered through binoculars. He said to Kelly, “I hate it when he tells us it’s obvious.”

“I know,” she said, with a sigh.

Arby glanced over at Thorne, and caught his eye. Thorne made a V with his fingers, and then pushed one finger, tilting it over. The movement forced the second finger to shift, too. So the two fingers were connected.…

If it was a clue, he didn’t get it. He didn’t get it. He frowned.

Thorne mouthed: “Bridge.”

Arby looked, and watched the whip-like tails swing back and forth over the younger animals. “I get it!” Arby said. “They use their tails for defense. And they need long necks to counterbalance the long tails. It’s like a suspension bridge!”

Levine squinted at Arby. “You did that very fast,” he said.

Thorne turned away, hiding a smile.

“But I’m right …” Arby said.

“Yes,” Levine said, “your view is essentially correct. Long necks exist because the long tails exist. It’s a different situation in theropods, which stand on two legs. But in quadrupeds, there needs to be a counterbalance for the long tail, or the animal would simply tip over.”

Malcolm said, “Actually, there is something much more puzzling about this apatosaur herd.”

“Oh?” Levine said. “What’s that?”

“There are no true adults,” Malcolm said. “Those animals we see are very large by our standards. But in fact, none of them has attained full adult size. I find that perplexing.”

“Do you? It doesn’t trouble me in the least,” Levine said. “Unquestionably, it is simply because they haven’t had enough time to reach maturity. I’m sure apatosaurs grow more slowly than the other dinosaurs. After all, large mammals like elephants grow more slowly than small ones.”

Malcolm shook his head. “That’s not the explanation,” he said.

“Oh? Then what?”

“Keep looking,” Malcolm said, pointing out over the plain. “It’s really rather obvious.”

The kids giggled.

Levine gave a little shiver of displeasure. “What is obvious to me,” he said, “is that none of the species appear to have attained full adulthood. The triceratops, the apatosaurs, even the parasaurs are a bit smaller than one would expect. This argues for a consistent factor: some element of diet, the effects of confinement on a small island, perhaps even the way they were engineered. But I don’t consider it particularly remarkable or worrisome.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Malcolm said. “And then again, maybe you’re not.”

Puerto Cortés

“No flights?” Sarah Harding said. “What do you mean, there are no flights?” It was eleven o’clock in the morning. Harding had been flying for the last fifteen hours, much of it spent on a U.S. military transport that she’d caught from Nairobi to Dallas. She was exhausted. Her skin felt grimy; she needed a shower and a change of clothes. Instead she found herself arguing with this very stubborn official in a ratty little town on the west coast of Costa Rica. Outside, the rain had stopped, but the sky was still gray, with low-hanging clouds over the deserted airfield.

“I am sorry,” Rodríguez said. “No flights can be arranged.”

“But what about the helicopter that took the men earlier?”

“There is a helicopter, yes.”

“Where is it?”

“The helicopter is not here.”

“I can see that. But where is it?”

Rodríguez spread his hands. “It has gone to San Cristóbal.”

“When will it be back?”

“I do not know. I think tomorrow, or perhaps the day after.”

“Señor Rodríguez,” she said firmly, “I must get to that island today.”

“I understand your wish,” Rodríguez said. “But I cannot do anything to help this.”

“What do you suggest?”

Rodríguez shrugged. “I could not make a suggestion.”

“Is there a boat that will take me?”

“I do not know of a boat.”

“This is a harbor,” Harding said. She pointed out the window. “I see all sorts of boats out there.”

“I know. But I do not believe one will go to the islands. The weather is not so favorable.”

“But if I were to go down to—”

“Yes, of course.” Rodríguez sighed. “Of course you may ask.”

Which was how she found herself, shortly after eleven o’clock on a rainy morning, walking down the rickety wooden dock, with her backpack on her shoulder. Four boats were tied up to the dock, which smelled strongly of fish. But all the boats seemed to be deserted. All the activity was at the far end of the dock, where a much larger boat was tied up. Beside the boat, a red Jeep Wrangler was being strapped for loading, along with several large steel drums and wooden crates of supplies. She admired the car in passing; it had been specially modified, enlarged to the size of the Land Rover Defender, the most desirable of all field vehicles. Changing this Jeep must have been an expensive alteration, she thought: only for researchers with lots of money.

Standing on the dock, a pair of Americans in wide-brimmed sun hats were shouting and pointing as the Jeep lifted lopsidedly into the air, and was swung onto the deck of the boat with an ancient crane. She heard one of the men shout “Careful! Careful!” as the Jeep thudded down hard on the wooden deck. “Damn it, be careful!” Several workmen began to carry the boxes onto the ship. The crane swung back to pick up the steel drums.

Harding went over to the nearest man and said politely, “Excuse me, but I wonder if you could help me.”

The man glanced at her. He was medium height, with reddish skin and bland features; he looked awkward in new khaki safari clothes. His manner was preoccupied and tense. “I’m busy now,” he said, and turned away. “Manuel! Watch it, that’s sensitive equipment!”

“I’m sorry to bother you,” she continued, “but my name is Sarah Harding, and I’m trying—”

“I don’t care if you’re Sarah Bernhardt, the—Manuel! Damn it!” The man waved his arms. “You there! Yes, you! Hold that box upright!”

“I’m trying to get to Isla Sorna,” she said, finishing.

At this, the man’s entire demeanor changed. He turned back to her slowly. “Isla Sorna?” he said. “You’re not associated with Dr. Levine by any chance, are you?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said, suddenly breaking into a warm smile. “What do you know!” He extended his hand. “I’m Lew Dodgson, from the Biosyn Corporation, back in Cupertino. This is my associate, Howard King.”

“Hi,” the other man said, nodding. Howard King was younger and taller than Dodgson, and he was handsome in a clean-cut California way. Sarah recognized his type: a classic beta male animal, subservient to the core. And there was something odd about his behavior toward her: he moved a little away, and seemed as uncomfortable around her as Dodgson now seemed friendly.

“And up there,” Dodgson continued, pointing onto the deck, “is our third, George Baselton.”

Harding saw a heavyset man on the deck, bent over the boxes as they came on board. His shirtsleeves were soaked in sweat. She said, “Are you all friends of Richard?”

“We’re on our way over to see him right now,” Dodgson said, “to help him out.” He hesitated, frowning at her. “But, uh, he didn’t tell us about you.…”

She was suddenly aware then of how she must appear to him: a short woman in her thirties, wearing a rumpled shirt, khaki shorts, and heavy boots. Her clothes dirty, her hair unkempt after all the flights.

She said, “I know Richard through Ian Malcolm. Ian and I are old friends.”

“I see.…” He continued to stare at her, as if he was unsure of her in some way.

She felt compelled to explain. “I’ve been in Africa. I decided to come here at the last minute,” she said. “Doc Thorne called me.”

“Oh, of course. Doc.” The man nodded, and seemed to relax, as if everything now made sense to him.

She said, “Is Richard all right?”

“Well, I certainly hope so. Because we’re taking all this equipment to him.”

“You’re going to Sorna now?”

“We are, if this weather holds,” Dodgson said, glancing at the sky. “We should be ready to go in five or ten minutes. You know, you’re welcome to join us, if you need a ride,” he said cheerfully. “We could use the company. Where’s your stuff?”

“I’ve only got this,” she said, lifting her small backpack.

“Traveling light, eh? Well, good, Ms. Harding. Welcome to the party.”

He seemed entirely open and friendly now. It was such a marked change from his earlier behavior. But she noticed that the handsome man, King, remained distinctly uneasy. King turned his back to her, and acted very busy, shouting at the workmen to be careful with the last of the wooden crates, which were marked “Biosyn Corporation” in stenciled lettering. She had the impression he was avoiding looking at her. And she still hadn’t gotten a good look at the third man, on deck. It made her hesitate.

“You’re sure it’s all right.…”

“Of course it’s all right! We’d be delighted!” Dodgson said. “Besides, how else are you going to get there? There’s no planes, the helicopter is gone.”

“I know, I checked.…”

“Well, then, you know. If you want to get to the island, you’d better go with us.”

She looked at the Jeep on the boat, and said, “I think Doc must already be there, with his equipment.”

At the mention of that, the second man, King, snapped his head around in alarm. But Dodgson just nodded calmly and said, “Yes, I think so. He left last night, I believe.”

“That’s what he said to me.”

“Right.” Dodgson nodded. “So he’s already there. At least, I hope he is.”

From on deck, there were shouts in Spanish, and a captain in greasy overalls came and looked over the side. “Señor Dodgson, we are ready.”

“Good,” Dodgson said. “Excellent. Climb aboard, Ms. Harding. Let’s get going!”

King

Spewing black smoke, the fishing boat chugged out of the harbor, heading toward open sea. Howard King felt the rumble of the ship’s engines beneath his feet, heard the creak of the wood. He listened to the shouts of the crewmen in Spanish. King looked back at the little town of Puerto Cortés, a jumble of little houses clustered around the water’s edge. He hoped this damn boat was seaworthy—because they were out in the middle of nowhere.

And Dodgson was cutting corners. Taking chances again.

It was the situation King feared most.

Howard King had known Lewis Dodgson for almost ten years, ever since he had joined Biosyn as a young Berkeley Ph.D., a promising researcher with the energy to conquer the world. King had done his doctoral thesis on blood-coagulation factors. He had joined Biosyn at a time of intense interest in those factors, which seemed to hold the key to dissolving clots in patients with heart attacks. There was a race among biotech companies to develop a new drug that would save lives, and make a fortune as well.

Initially, King worked on a promising substance called Hemaggluttin V-5, or HGV-5. In early tests it dissolved platelet aggregation to an astonishing degree. King became the most promising young researcher at Biosyn. His picture was prominently featured in the annual report. He had his own lab, and an operating budget of nearly half a million dollars.

And then, without warning, the bottom fell out. In preliminary tests on human subjects, HGV-5 failed to dissolve clots in either myocardial infarctions or pulmonary embolisms. Worse, it produced severe side effects: gastrointestinal bleeding, skin rashes, neurological problems. After one patient died from convulsions, the company halted further testing. Within weeks, King lost his lab. A newly arrived Danish researcher took it over; he was developing an extract from the saliva of the Sumatran yellow leech, which showed more promise.

King moved to a smaller lab, decided he was tired of blood factors, and turned his attention to painkillers. He had an interesting compound, the L-isomer of a protein from the African horny toad, which seemed to have narcotic effects. But he had lost his former confidence, and when the company reviewed his work, they concluded that his research was insufficiently documented to warrant seeking FDA approvals for testing. His horny-toad project was summarily canceled.

King was then thirty-five, and twice a failure. His picture no longer graced the annual report. It was rumored that the company would probably let him go at the next review period. When he proposed a new research project, it was rejected at once. It was a dark time in his life.

Then Lewis Dodgson suggested they have lunch.

Dodgson had an unsavory reputation among the researchers; he was known as “The Undertaker,” because of the way he took over the work of others, and prettied it up as his own. In earlier years, King never would have been seen with him. But now he allowed Dodgson to take him to an expensive seafood restaurant in San Francisco.

“Research is hard,” Dodgson said, sympathetically.

“You can say that again,” King said.

“Hard, and risky,” Dodgson said. “The fact is, innovative research rarely pans out. But does management understand? No. If the research fails, you’re the one who’s blamed. It’s not fair.”

“Tell me,” King said.

“But that’s the name of the game.” Dodgson shrugged, and speared a leg of soft-shell crab.

King said nothing.

“Personally, I don’t like risk,” Dodgson continued. “And original work is risky. Most new ideas are bad, and most original work fails. That’s the reality. If you feel compelled to do original research, you can expect to fail. That’s all right if you work in a university, where failure is praised and success leads to ostracism. But in industry … no, no. Original work in industry is not a wise career choice. It’s only going to get you into trouble. Which is where you are right now, my friend.”

“What can I do?” King said.

“Well,” Dodgson said. “I have my own version of the scientific method. I call it focused research development. If only a few ideas are going to be good, why try to find them yourself? It’s too hard. Let other people find them—let them take the risk—let them go for the so-called glory. I’d rather wait, and develop ideas that already show promise. Take what’s good, and make it better. Or at least, make it different enough so that I can patent it. And then I own it. Then, it’s mine.”

King was amazed at the straightforward way that Dodgson admitted he was a thief. He didn’t seem in the least embarrassed. King poked at his salad for a while. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I see something in you,” Dodgson said. “I see ambition. Frustrated ambition. And I’m telling you, Howard, you don’t have to be frustrated. You don’t even have to be fired from the company at the next performance review. Which is exactly what’s going to happen. How old is your kid?”

“Four,” King said.

“Terrible, to be out of work, with a young family. And it won’t be easy to get another job. Who’s going to give you a chance now? By thirty-five, a research scientist has already made his mark, or he’s not likely to. I don’t say that’s right, but that’s how they think.”

King knew that’s how they thought. At every biotechnology company in California.

“But Howard,” Dodgson said, leaning across the table, lowering his voice, “a wonderful world awaits you, if you choose to look at things differently. There’s a whole other way to live your life. I really think you should consider what I’m saying.”

Two weeks later, King became Dodgson’s personal assistant in the Department of Future Biogenic Trends, which was how Biosyn referred to its efforts at industrial espionage. And in the years that followed, King had once again risen swiftly at Biosyn—this time because Dodgson liked him.

Now King had all the accoutrements of success: a Porsche, a mortgage, a divorce, a kid he saw on weekends. All because King had proven to be the perfect second in command, working long hours, handling the details, keeping his fast-talking boss out of trouble. And in the process, King had come to know all the sides of Dodgson—his charismatic side, his visionary side, and his dark, ruthless side. King told himself that he could handle the ruthless side, that he could keep it in check, that over the years he had learned how to do that.

But sometimes, he was not so sure.

Like now.

Because here they were, in some rickety stinking fishing boat, heading out into the ocean off some desolate village in Costa Rica, and in this tense moment Dodgson had suddenly decided to play some kind of game, meeting this woman and deciding to take her along.

King didn’t know what Dodgson intended, but he could see the intense gleam in Dodgson’s eyes that he had seen only a few times before, and it was a look that always alarmed him.

The woman Harding was now up on the foredeck, standing near the bow. She was looking off at the ocean. King saw Dodgson walking around the Jeep, and beckoned to him nervously.

“Listen,” King said, “we have to talk.”

“Sure,” Dodgson said, easily. “What’s on your mind?”

And he smiled. That charming smile.

Harding

Sarah Harding stared at the gray, menacing sky. The boat rolled in the heavy offshore swell. The deckhands scrambled to tie down the Jeep, which threatened repeatedly to break free. She stood in the bow, fighting seasickness. On the far horizon, dead ahead, she could just see the low black line that was their first glimpse of Isla Sorna.

She turned and looked back, and saw Dodgson and King were huddled by the railing amidships, in intense conversation. King seemed to be upset, gesticulating rapidly. Dodgson was listening, and shaking his head. After a moment, he put his arm on King’s shoulder. He seemed to be trying to calm the younger man down. Both men ignored the activity around the Jeep. Which was odd, she thought, considering how worried they had been earlier about the equipment. Now they didn’t seem to care.

As for the third man, Baselton, she had of course recognized him, and she was surprised to find him here on this little fishing boat. Baselton had shaken her hand in a perfunctory way, and he had disappeared belowdecks as soon as the ship pulled away from the dock. He had not reappeared. But perhaps he was seasick, too.

As she continued to watch, she saw Dodgson break away from King, and hurry over to supervise the deckhands. Left alone, King went to check on the straps that lashed the boxes and barrels to the deck farther aft. The boxes marked “Biosyn.”

Harding had never heard of the Biosyn Corporation. She wondered what connection Ian and Richard had with it. Whenever Ian was around her, he had always been critical, even contemptuous, of biotechnology companies. And these men seemed to be unlikely friends. They were too rigid, too … geeky.

But then, she reflected, Ian did have strange friends. They were always showing up unexpectedly at his apartment—the Japanese calligrapher, the Indonesian gamalan troupe, the Las Vegas juggler in a shiny bolero jacket, that weird French astrologer who thought the earth was hollow.… And then there were his mathematician friends. They were really crazy. Or so they seemed to Sarah. They were so wild-eyed, so wrapped up in their proofs. Pages and pages of proofs, sometimes hundreds of pages. It was all too abstract for her. Sarah Harding liked to touch the dirt, to see the animals, to experience the sounds and the smells. That was real to her. Everything else was just a bunch of theories: possibly right, possibly wrong.

Waves began to crash over the bow, and she moved a little astern, to keep dry. She yawned; she hadn’t slept much in the last twenty-four hours. Dodgson finished working on the Jeep, and came over to her.

She said, “Everything all right?”

“Oh yes,” Dodgson said, smiling cheerfully.

“Your friend King seemed upset.”

“He doesn’t like boats,” Dodgson said. He nodded to the waves. “But we’re making better time. It’ll only be an hour or so, until we land.”

“Tell me,” she said. “What is the Biosyn Corporation? I’ve never heard of it.”

“It’s a small company,” Dodgson said. “We make what are called consumer biologicals. We specialize in recreational and sports organisms. For example, we engineered new kinds of trout, and other game fish. We’re making new kinds of dogs—smaller pets for apartment dwellers. That sort of thing.”

Exactly the sort of thing that Ian hated, she thought. “How do you know Ian?”

“Oh, we go way back,” Dodgson said.

She noticed his vagueness. “How far?”

“Back to the days of the park.”

“The park,” she said.

He nodded. “Did he ever tell you how he hurt his leg?”

“No,” she said. “He would never talk about it. He just said it happened on a consulting job that had … I don’t know. Some sort of trouble. Was it a park?”

“Yes, in a way,” Dodgson said, staring out at the ocean. After a moment, he shrugged. “And what about you? How do you know him?”

“He was one of my thesis readers. I’m an ethologist. I study large mammals in African grassland ecosystems. East Africa. Carnivores, in particular.”

“Carnivores?”

“I’ve been studying hyenas,” she said. “Before that, lions.”

“For a long time?”

“Almost ten years, now. Six years continuously, since my doctorate.”

“Interesting,” Dodgson said, nodding. “And so did you come here all the way from Africa?”

“Yes, from Seronera. In Tanzania.”

Dodgson nodded vaguely. He looked past her shoulder toward the island. “What do you know. Looks like the weather may clear, after all.”

She turned and saw streaks of blue in the thinning clouds overhead. The sun was trying to break through. The sea was calmer. And she was surprised to see the island was much closer. She could clearly see the cliffs, rising above the seas. The cliffs were reddish-gray volcanic rock, very sheer.

“In Tanzania,” Dodgson said. “You run a large research team?”

“No. I work alone.”

“No students?” he said.

“I’m afraid not. It’s because my work just isn’t very glamorous. The big savannah carnivores in Africa are primarily nocturnal. So my research is mostly conducted at night.”

“Must be hard on your husband.”

“Oh, I’m not married,” she said, with a little shrug.

“I’m surprised,” he said. “After all, a beautiful woman like you …”

“I never had time,” she said quickly. To change the subject, she said, “Where do you land on this island?”

Dodgson turned to look. They were now close enough to the island to see the waves crashing, high and white, against the base of the cliffs. They were only a mile or two away.

“It’s an unusual island,” Dodgson said. “This whole region of central America is volcanic. There are something like thirty active volcanoes between Mexico and Colombia. All these offshore islands were at one time active volcanoes, part of the central chain. But unlike the mainland, the islands are now dormant. Haven’t erupted for a thousand years or so.”

“So we’re seeing the outside of the crater?”

“Exactly. The cliffs are all the result of erosion from rainfall, but the ocean erodes the base of the cliffs, too. Those flat sections on the cliff you see are where the ocean cut in at the bottom, and huge areas of the cliff face were undermined, and just cleaved, falling straight down into the sea. It’s all soft volcanic rock.”

“And so you land …”

“There are several places on the windward side where the ocean has cut caves into the cliff. And at two of those places, the caves meet rivers flowing out from the interior. So they’re passable.” He pointed ahead. “You see there, you can just now see one of the caves.”

Sarah Harding saw a dark irregular opening cut into the base of the cliff. All around it, the waves crashed, plumes of white water rising fifty feet up into the air.

“You’re going to take this boat into that cave there?”

“If the weather holds, yes.” Dodgson turned away. “Don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it looks. Anyway, you were saying. About Africa. When did you leave Africa?”

“Right after Doc Thorne called. He said he was going with Ian to rescue Richard, and asked if I wanted to come.”

“And what did you say?”

“I said I’d think about it.”

Dodgson frowned. “You didn’t tell him you were coming?”

“No. Because I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I mean, I’m busy. I have my work. And it’s a long way.”

“For an old lover,” Dodgson said, nodding sympathetically.

She sighed. “Well. You know. Ian.”

“Yes, I know Ian,” Dodgson said. “Quite a character.”

“That’s one way to put it,” she said.

There was an awkward silence. Dodgson cleared his throat. “I’m confused,” he said. “Who exactly did you tell you were coming here?”

“Nobody,” she said. “I just jumped on the next plane and came.”

“But what about your university, your colleagues …”

She shrugged. “There wasn’t time. And as I said, I work alone.” She looked again at the island. The cliffs rose high above the boat. They were only a few hundred yards away. The cave appeared much larger now, but the waves crashed high on either side. She shook her head. “It looks pretty rough.”

“Don’t worry,” Dodgson said. “See? The captain’s already making for it. We’ll be perfectly safe, once we’re passing through. And then … It should be very exciting.”

The boat rolled and dipped in the sea, an uncertain motion. She gripped the railing. Beside her, Dodgson grinned. “See what I mean? Exciting, isn’t it?” He seemed suddenly energized, almost agitated. His body became tense; he rubbed his hands together. “No need to worry, Ms. Harding, I can’t allow anything to happen to—”

She didn’t know what he was talking about, but before she could reply, the nose of the boat dipped again, kicking up spray, and she stumbled a little. Dodgson bent over quickly—apparently to steady her—but it seemed as if something went wrong—his body struck against her legs, then lifted—and then another wave crashed over them and she felt her body twist and she screamed and clutched at the railing. But it was all happening too fast, the world upended and swirled around her, her head clanged once on the railing and then she was tumbling, falling through space. She saw the peeling paint on the hull of the boat sliding past her, she saw the green ocean rush up toward her, and then she was shocked with the sudden stinging cold as she plunged into the rough, heaving sea, and sank beneath the waves, into darkness.

The Valley

“This is going extremely well,” Levine said, rubbing his hands together. “Far beyond my expectations, I must say. I couldn’t be more pleased.”

He was standing in the high hide with Thorne, Eddie, Malcolm, and the kids, looking down on the valley floor below. Everyone was sweating inside the little observation hut; the midday air was still and hot. Around them, the grassy meadow was deserted; most of the dinosaurs had moved beneath the trees, into the cool of the shade.

The exception was the herd of apatosaurs, which had left the trees to return to the river, where they were now drinking once again. The huge animals clustered fairly tightly around the water’s edge. In the same vicinity, but more spread out, were the high-crested parasaurolophasaurs; these somewhat smaller dinosaurs positioned themselves near the apatosaur herd.

Thorne wiped sweat out of his eyes and said, “Why, exactly, are you pleased?”

“Because of what we’re seeing here,” Malcolm said. He glanced at his watch, and wrote an entry in his notebook. “We’re getting the data that I hoped for. It’s very exciting.”

Thorne yawned, sleepy in the heat. “Why is it exciting? The dinosaurs are drinking. What’s the big deal?”

“Drinking again,” Levine corrected him. “For the second time in an hour. At midday. Such fluid intake is highly suggestive of the thermoregulatory strategies these large creatures employ.”

“You mean they drink a lot to stay cool,” Thorne said, always impatient with jargon.

“Yes. Clearly they do. Drink a lot. But in my view, their return to the river may have another significance entirely.”

“Which is?”

“Come, come,” Levine said, pointing. “Look at the herds. Look how they are arranged spatially. We are seeing something that no one has witnessed before, or even suspected, for dinosaurs. We’re seeing nothing less than inter-species symbiosis.”

“We are?”

“Yes,” Levine said. “The apatosaurs and the parasaurs are together. I saw them together yesterday, too. I’ll bet that they’re always together, when they’re out on the open plain. Undoubtedly you are wondering why.”

“Undoubtedly,” Thorne said.

“The reason,” Levine said, “is that the apatosaurs are very strong but weak-sighted, whereas the parasaurs are smaller, but have very sharp vision. So the two species stay together because they provide a mutual defense. Just the way zebras and baboons stay together on the African plain. Zebras have a good sense of smell, and baboons have good eyesight. Together they’re more effective against predators than either is alone.”

“And you think this is true of the dinosaurs because …”

“It’s rather obvious,” Levine said. “Just look at the behavior. When the two herds were alone, each clustered tightly among themselves. But when they’re together, the parasaurs spread out, abandoning their former herd arrangement, to form an outer ring around the apatosaurs. Just as you see them now. That can only mean that individual paras are going to be protected by the apatosaur herd. And vice versa. It can only be a mutual predator defense.”

As they watched, one of the parasaurs lifted its head, and stared across the river. It honked mournfully, a long musical sound. All the other parasaurs looked up and stared, too. The apatosaurs continued to drink at the river, although one or two adults raised their long necks.

In the midday heat, insects buzzed around them. Thorne said, “So where are the predators?”

“Right there,” Malcolm said, pointing toward a stand of trees on the other side of the river, not far from the water.

Thorne looked, and saw nothing.

“Don’t you see them?”

“No.”

“Keep looking. They’re small, lizard-like animals. Dark brown. Raptors,” he said.

Thorne shrugged. He still saw nothing. Standing beside him, Levine began to eat a power bar. Preoccupied with holding the binoculars, he dropped the wrapper on the floor of the hide. Bits of paper fluttered to the ground below.

“How are those things?” Arby said.

“Okay. A little sugary.”

“Got any more?” he said.

Levine rummaged in his pockets and gave him one. Arby broke it in half, and gave half to Kelly. He began to unwrap his half, carefully folding the paper, putting it neatly in his pocket.

“You realize this is all highly significant,” Malcolm said. “For the question of extinction. Already it’s obvious that the extinction of the dinosaurs is a far more complex problem than anyone has recognized.”

“It is?” Arby said.

“Well, consider,” Malcolm said. “All extinction theories are based on the fossil record. But the fossil record doesn’t show the sort of behavior we’re seeing here. It doesn’t record the complexity of groups interacting.”

“Because fossils are just bones,” Arby said.

“Right. And bones are not behavior. When you think about it, the fossil record is like a series of photographs: frozen moments from what is really a moving, ongoing reality. Looking at the fossil record is like thumbing through a family photo album. You know that the album isn’t complete. You know life happens between the pictures. But you don’t have any record of what happens in between, you only have the pictures. So you study them, and study them. And pretty soon, you begin to think of the album not as a series of moments, but as reality itself. And you begin to explain everything in terms of the album, and you forget the underlying reality.

“And the tendency,” Malcolm said, “has been to think in terms of physical events. To assume that some external physical event caused the extinctions. A meteor hits the earth, and changes the weather. Or volcanoes erupt, and change the weather. Or a meteor causes the volcanoes to erupt and change the weather. Or vegetation changes, and species starve and become extinct. Or a new disease arises, and species become extinct. Or a new plant arises, and poisons all the dinosaurs. In every case, what is imagined is some external event. But what nobody imagines is that the animals themselves might have changed—not in their bones, but their behavior. Yet when you look at animals like these, and see how intricately their behavior is interrelated, you realize that a change in group behavior could easily lead to extinction.”

“But why would group behavior change?” Thorne said. “If there wasn’t some external catastrophe to force it, why should the behavior change?”

“Actually,” Malcolm said, “behavior is always changing, all the time. Our planet is a dynamic, active environment. Weather is changing. The land is changing. Continents drift. Oceans rise and fall. Mountains thrust up and erode away. All the organisms on the planet are constantly adapting to those changes. The best organisms are the ones that can adapt most rapidly. That’s why it’s hard to see how a catastrophe that produces a large change could cause extinction, since so much change is occurring all the time, anyway.”

“In that case,” Thorne said, “what causes extinction?”

“Certainly not rapid change alone,” Malcolm said. “The facts tell us that clearly.”

“What facts?”

“After every major environmental change, a wave of extinctions has usually followed—but not right away. Extinctions only occur thousands, or millions of years later. Take the last glaciation in North America. The glaciers descended, the climate changed severely, but animals didn’t die. Only after the glaciers receded, when you’d think things would go back to normal, did lots of species become extinct. That’s when giraffes and tigers and mammoths vanished on this continent. And that’s the usual pattern. It’s almost as if species are weakened by the major change, but die off later. It’s a well-recognized phenomenon.”

“It’s called Softening Up the Beachhead,” Levine said.

“And what’s the explanation for it?”

Levine was silent.

“There is none,” Malcolm said. “It’s a paleontological mystery. But I believe that complexity theory has a lot to tell us about it. Because if the notion of life at the edge of chaos is true, then major change pushes animals closer to the edge. It destabilizes all sorts of behavior. And when the environment goes back to normal, it’s not really a return to normal. In evolutionary terms, it’s another big change, and it’s just too much to keep up with. I believe that new behavior in populations can emerge in unexpected ways, and I think I know why the dinosaurs—”

“What’s that?” Thorne said.

Thorne was looking at the trees, and saw a single dinosaur hop out into view. It was rather slender, agile on its hind legs, balancing with a stiff tail. It was six feet tall, green-brown with dark-red stripes, like a tiger.

“That,” Malcolm said, “is a velociraptor.”

Thorne turned to Levine. “That’s what chased you up in the tree? It looks ugly.”

“Efficient,” Levine said. “Those animals are brilliantly constructed killing machines. Arguably the most efficient predators in the history of the planet. The one that just stepped out will be the alpha animal. It leads the pack.”

Thorne saw other movement beneath the trees. “There’s more.”

“Oh yes,” Levine said. “This particular pack is very large.” He picked up binoculars, and peered through them. “I’d like to locate their nest,” he said. “I haven’t been able to find it anywhere on the island. Of course they’re secretive, but even so …”

The parasaurs were all crying loudly, moving closer to the apatosaur herd as they did so. But the big apatosaurs seemed relatively indifferent; the adults nearest the water actually turned their backs to the approaching raptor.

“Don’t they care?” Arby said. “They’re not even looking at him.”

“Don’t be fooled,” Levine said, “the apatosaurs care very much. They may look like gigantic cows, but they’re nothing of the sort. Those whiptails are thirty or forty feet long, and weigh several tons. Notice how fast they can swing them. One smack from those tails would snap an attacker’s back.”

“So turning away is part of their defense?”

“Unquestionably, yes. And you can see now how the long necks balance their tails.”

The tails of the adults were so long, they reached entirely across the river, to the other shore. As they swung back and forth, and the parasaurs cried out, the lead raptor turned away. Moments later, the entire pack began to slink off, following the edge of the trees, heading up into the hills.

“Looks like you’re right,” Thorne said. “The tails scared them off.”

“How many do you count?” Levine said.

“I don’t know. Ten to twelve. I might have missed a few.”

“Fourteen.” Malcolm scribbled in his notebook.

“You want to follow them?” Levine said.

“Not now.”

“We could take the Explorer.”

“Maybe later,” Malcolm said.

“I think we need to know where their nest is,” Levine said. “It’s essential, Ian, if we’re going to settle predator-prey relationships. Nothing is more important than that. And this is a perfect opportunity to follow—”

“Maybe later,” Malcolm said. He checked his watch again.

“That’s the hundredth time you’ve checked your watch today,” Thorne said.

Malcolm shrugged. “Getting to be lunchtime,” he said. “By the way, what about Sarah? Shouldn’t she be arriving soon?”

“Yes. I imagine she’ll show up any time now,” Thorne said.

Malcolm wiped his forehead. “It’s hot up here.”

“Yes, it’s hot.”

They listened to the buzzing of insects in the midday sun, and watched the raptors retreat.

“You know, I’m thinking,” Malcolm said. “Maybe we ought to go back.”

“Go back?” Levine said. “Now? What about our observations? What about the other cameras we want to place and—”

“I don’t know, maybe it’d be good to take a break.”

Levine stared at him in disbelief. He said nothing.

Thorne and the kids looked at Malcolm silently.

“Well, it seems to me,” Malcolm said, “that if Sarah’s coming all the way from Africa, we should be there to greet her.” He shrugged. “I think it’s simple politeness.”

Thorne said, “I didn’t realize that, uh …”

“No, no,” Malcolm said quickly. “It’s nothing like that. I just, uh … You know, maybe she’s not even coming.” He looked suddenly uncertain. “Did she say she was coming?”

“She said she’d think about it.”

Malcolm frowned. “Then she’s coming. If Sarah said that, she’s coming. I know her. So. What do you say, want to go back?”

“Certainly not,” Levine said, peering through binoculars. “I wouldn’t dream of leaving here now.”

Malcolm turned. “Doc? Want to go back?”

“Sure,” Thorne said, wiping his forehead. “It’s hot.”

“If I know Sarah,” Malcolm said, climbing down the scaffolding, “she’s going to show up on this island just looking great.”

Cave

She struggled upward, and her head broke the surface, but she saw only water—great swells rising fifteen feet above her, on all sides. The power of the ocean was immense. The surge dragged her forward, then back, and she was helpless to resist. She could not see the boat anywhere, only foaming sea, on all sides. She could not see the island, only water. Only water. She fought a sense of overwhelming panic.

She tried to kick against the current, but her boots were leaden. She sank down again, and struggled back, gasping for air. She had to get her boots off, somehow. She gulped a breath and ducked her head under the water, and tried to unlace the boots. Her lungs burned as she fumbled with the knots. The ocean swept her back and forth, ceaselessly.

She got one boot off, gulped air, and ducked down again. Her fingers were stiff with cold and fright, as she worked on the other boot. It seemed to take hours. Finally her legs were free, light, and she dogpaddled, catching her breath. The surge lifted her high, dropped her again. She could not see the island. She felt panic again. She turned, and felt the surge lift once more. And then she saw the island.

The sheer cliffs were close, frighteningly close. The waves boomed as they smashed against the rocks. She was no more than fifty yards offshore, being swept inexorably toward the crashing surf. On the next crest, she saw the cave, a hundred yards to her right. She tried to swim toward it, but it was hopeless. She had no power at all to move in this gigantic surf. She felt only the strength of the sea, sweeping her to the cliffs.

Panic made her heart race. She knew she would be instantly killed. A wave crested over her; she gulped sea water, and coughed. Her eyes blurred. She felt nausea and deep, deep terror.

She put her head down and began to swim, arm over arm, kicking as hard as she could. She had no sense of movement, only the sideways pull of the surge. She dared not look up. She kicked harder. When she raised her head for another breath, she saw she had moved a little—not much, but a little—to the north. She was a little nearer to the cave.

She was encouraged, but she was terrified. She had so little strength! Her arms and legs ached with her effort. Her lungs burned. Her breath came in short ragged heaving gasps. She coughed again, grabbed another breath, put her head down and kicked onward.

Even with her head in the water, she heard the deep boom of the surf against the cliffs. She kicked with all her might. The currents and surge moved her left and right, forward and back. It was hopeless. But still she tried.

Gradually, the ache in her muscles became a steady dull pain. She felt she had lived with this pain all her life. She did not notice it any more. She kicked on, oblivious.

When she felt the surge lift her up again, she raised her head for a breath. She was startled to see that the cave was very close. A few more strokes and she would be swept inside it. She had thought the current might be less severe around the cave. But it wasn’t; on either side of the opening, the waves crashed high, climbing the cliff walls, and then falling back. The boat was nowhere in sight.

She ducked her head down again, kicked forward, using the last of her strength. She could feel her entire body weakening. She could not last much longer. She knew she was being carried toward the cliffs. She heard the boom of the surf louder now, and she kicked again, and suddenly a huge swell swept her up, lifting her, carrying her toward the cliffs. She was powerless to resist it. She raised her head to look, and saw darkness, inky darkness.

In her exhaustion and pain, she realized that she was inside the cave. She had been swept into the cave! The booming sound was hollow, reverberating. It was too dark to see the walls on either side. The current was intense, sweeping her ever deeper. She gasped for breath and paddled ineffectually. Her body scraped against rock; she felt a moment of searing pain, and then she was swept farther into the depths of the cave. But now there was a difference. She saw faint light on the ceiling, and the water around her seemed to glow. The surge lessened. She found it easier to keep her head above water. She saw hot light ahead, brilliantly hot—the end of the cave.

And suddenly, astonishingly, she was carried through, and burst into sunlight and open air. She found herself in the middle of a broad muddy river, surrounded by dense green foliage. The air was hot and still; she heard the distant cries of jungle birds.

Up ahead, around a bend in the river, she saw the stern of Dodgson’s boat, already tied up to the shore. She could not see any of the people, and she didn’t want to see them.

Summoning her remaining strength, she kicked toward shore, and clutched at a stand of mangroves, growing thickly along the water’s edge. Too weak to hold on, she hooked her arm around a root, and lay on her back in the gentle current, looking up at the sky, gasping for breath. She did not know how much time passed, but finally she felt strong enough to haul herself arm over arm along the mangrove roots at the water’s edge, until she came to a narrow break in the foliage, leading to a patch of muddy shore beyond. As she dragged herself out of the water, and up on the slippery bank, she noticed several rather large animal footprints in the mud. They were curious, three-toed footprints, with each toe ending in a large claw …

She bent to examine them more closely, and then she felt the earth vibrating, trembling beneath her hands. A large shadow fell over her and she looked up in astonishment at the leathery, pale underbelly of an enormous animal. She was too weak to react, even to raise her head.

The last thing she saw was a huge leathery foot landing beside her, squishing in the mud, and a soft snorting sound. And then suddenly, abruptly, exhaustion overtook her, and Sarah Harding collapsed, and fell onto her back. Her eyes rolled up into her head, and she lost consciousness.

Dodgson

A few yards up from the shore of the river, Lewis Dodgson climbed into the custom-made Jeep Wrangler and slammed the door shut. Beside him in the passenger seat, Howard King was wringing his hands. He said, “How could you have done that to her?”

“Done what?” George Baselton said, from the back seat.

Dodgson did not reply. He turned the key in the ignition. The engine rumbled to life. He popped the four-wheel drive into gear and headed up the hill into the jungle, away from the boat at the shore.

“How could you?” King said again, agitated. “I mean, Jesus.”

“What happened was an accident,” Dodgson said.

“An accident? An accident?”

“That’s right, an accident,” Dodgson said calmly. “She fell overboard.”

“I didn’t see anything,” Baselton said.

King was shaking his head. “Jesus, what if somebody comes to investigate and—”

“What if they do?” Dodgson said, interrupting him. “We were in rough seas, she was standing at the bow, a big wave hit us and she was washed overboard. She couldn’t swim very well. We circled and looked for her, but there was no hope. A very unfortunate accident. So what are you concerned about?”

“What am I concerned about?”

“Yes, Howard. Exactly what the fuck are you concerned about?”

“I saw it, for Christ’s sake—”

“No, you didn’t,” Dodgson said.

“I didn’t see anything,” Baselton said. “I was down below, the whole time.”

“That’s fine for you,” Howard King said. “But what if there’s an investigation?”

The Jeep bounced up the dirt track, moving deeper into the jungle. “There won’t be,” Dodgson said. “She left Africa in a hurry, and she didn’t tell anybody where she was going.”

“How do you know?” King whined.

“Because she told me, Howard. That’s how I know. Now get the map out and stop moaning. You knew the deal when you joined me.”

“I didn’t know you were going to kill somebody, for Christ’s sake.”

“Howard,” Dodgson said, with a sigh. “Nothing’s going to happen. Get the map out.”

“How do you know?” King said.

“Because I know what I’m doing,” Dodgson said. “That’s why. Unlike Malcolm and Thorne, who are somewhere on this island, screwing around, doing fuck knows what in this damned jungle.”

Mention of the others caused a new worry. Fretting, King said, “Maybe we’ll run into them.…”

“No, Howard, we won’t. They’ll never even know we’re here. We’re only going to be on this island for four hours, remember? Land at one. Back on the boat by five. Back at the port by seven. Back in San Francisco by midnight. Bang. Done. Finito. And finally, after all these years, I’ll have what I should have had long ago.”

“Dinosaur embryos,” Baselton said.

“Embryos?” King asked, surprised.

“Oh, I’m not interested in embryos any more,” Dodgson said. “Years ago, I tried to get frozen embryos, but there’s no reason to bother with embryos now. I want fertilized eggs. And in four hours, I’ll have them from every species on this island.”

“How can you do that in four hours?”

“Because I already know the precise location of every dinosaur breeding site on the island. The map, Howard.”

King opened the map. It was a large topographical chart of the island, two feet by three feet, showing terrain elevations in blue contours. At several places in lowland valleys, there were dense red concentric circles. In some places, clusters of circles. “What’s this?” King said.

“Why don’t you read what it says,” Dodgson said.

King turned the map, and looked at the legend. “ ‘Sigma data Landsat/Nordstat mixed spectra VSFR/FASLR/IFFVR.’ And then a bunch of numbers. No, wait. Dates.”

“Correct,” Dodgson said. “Dates.”

“Pass dates? This is a summary chart, combining data from several satellite passes?”

“Correct.”

King frowned. “And it looks like … visible spectrum, and false aperture radar, and … what?”

“Infrared. Broadband thermal VR.” Dodgson smiled. “I did all this in about two hours. Downloaded all the satellite data, summarized it, and had the answers I wanted.”

“I get it,” King said. “These red circles are infrared signatures!”

“Yes,” Dodgson said. “Big animals leave big signatures. I got all the satellite flybys over this island for the last few years, and mapped the location of heat sources. And the locations overlapped from pass to pass, which is what makes these red concentric marks. Meaning that the animals tend to be located in these particular places. Why?” He turned to King. “Because these are the nesting sites.”

“Yes. They must be,” Baselton said.

“Maybe that’s where they eat,” King said.

Dodgson shook his head irritably. “Obviously, those circles can’t be feeding sites.”

“Why not?”

“Because these animals average twenty tons apiece, that’s why. You get a herd of twenty-ton dinos, and you’re talking a combined biomass of more than half a million pounds moving through the forest. That many big animals are going to eat a lot of plant matter in the course of a day. And the only way they can do that is by moving. Right?”

“I guess …”

“You guess? Look around you, Howard. Do you see any denuded sections of forest? No, you don’t. They eat a few leaves from the trees, and move on. Trust me, these animals have to move to eat. But what they don’t move is their nesting sites. So these red circles must be nesting sites.” He glanced at the map. “And unless I’m wrong, the first of the nests is just over this rise, and down the hill on the other side.”

The Jeep fishtailed in a patch of mud, and ground forward, lurching up the hill.

Mating Calls

Richard Levine stood in the high hide, staring at the herds through binoculars. Malcolm had gone back to the trailer with the others, leaving Levine alone. In fact, Levine was relieved to have him gone. Levine was quite content to make observations on these extraordinary animals, and he was aware that Malcolm did not share his boundless enthusiasm. Indeed, Malcolm always seemed to have other considerations on his mind. And Malcolm was notably impatient with the act of observation—he wanted to analyze the data, but he did not want to collect it.

Of course, among scientists, that represented a well-known difference in personality. Physics was a perfect example. The experimentalists and the theorists lived in utterly different worlds, passing papers back and forth but sharing little else in common. It was almost as if they were in different disciplines.

And for Levine and Malcolm, the difference in their approach had surfaced early, back in the Santa Fe days. Both men were interested in extinction, but Malcolm approached the subject broadly, from a purely mathematical standpoint. His detachment, his inexorable formulas, had fascinated Levine, and the two men began an informal exchange over frequent lunches: Levine taught Malcolm paleontology; Malcolm taught Levine nonlinear mathematics. They began to draw some tentative conclusions which both found exciting. But they also began to disagree. More than once they were asked to leave the restaurant; then they would go out into the heat of Guadelupe Street, and walk back toward the river, still shouting at each other, while approaching tourists hurried to the other side of the street.

In the end, their differences came down to personalities. Malcolm considered Levine pedantic and fussy, preoccupied with petty details. Levine never saw the big picture. He never looked at the consequences of his actions. For his own part, Levine did not hesitate to call Malcolm imperious and detached, indifferent to details.

“God is in the details,” Levine once reminded him.

“Maybe your God,” Malcolm shot back. “Not mine. Mine is in the process.”

Standing in the high hide, Levine thought that answer was exactly what you would expect from a mathematician. Levine was quite satisfied that details were everything, at least in biology, and that the most common failing of his biological colleagues was insufficient attention to detail.

For himself, Levine lived for the details, and he could not ever let them go. Like the animal that had attacked him with Diego. Levine thought of it often, turning it over and over again, reliving the events. Because there was something troubling, some impression that he could not get right.

The animal had attacked quickly, and he had sensed it was a basic theropod form—hind legs, stiff tail, large skull, the usual—but in the brief flash in which he had seen the creature, there seemed to be a peculiarity around the orbits, which made him think of Carnotaurus sastrei. From the Gorro Frigo formation in Argentina. And in addition, the skin was extremely unusual, it seemed to be a sort of bright mottled green, but there was something about it …

He shrugged. The troubling idea hung in the back of his mind, but he couldn’t get to it. He just couldn’t get it.

Reluctantly, Levine turned his attention to the parasaur herd, browsing by the river, alongside the apatosaurs. He listened as the parasaurs made their distinctive, low trumpeting sounds. Levine noticed that most often the parasaurs made a sound of short duration, a kind of rumbling honk. Sometimes, several animals made this sound at once, or very nearly overlapping; so it seemed to be an audible way of indicating to the herd where all the members were. Then there was a much longer, more dramatic trumpeting call. This sound was made infrequently, and only by the two largest animals in the herd, which raised their heads and trumpeted loud and long. But what did the sound mean?

Standing there in the hot sun, Levine decided to perform a little experiment. He cupped his hands around his mouth, and imitated the parasaur’s trumpeting cry. It wasn’t a very good imitation, but immediately the lead parasaur looked up, turning its head this way and that. And it gave a low cry, answering Levine.

Levine gave a second call.

Again, the parasaur answered.

Levine was pleased by this response, and made an entry in his notebook. But when he looked up again, he was surprised to see that the parasaur herd was drifting away from the apatosaurs. They collected together, formed a single line, and began to walk directly toward the high hide.

Levine started to sweat.

What had he done? In some bizarre corner of his mind, he wondered if he had imitated a mating cry. That was all he needed, to attract a randy dinosaur. Who knew how these animals behaved in mating? With growing anxiety, he watched them march forward. Probably, he should call Malcolm, and ask his advice. But as he thought about it, he realized that by imitating that cry he had interfered with the environment, introduced a new variable. He had done exactly what he had told Thorne he did not intend to do. It was thoughtless, of course. And surely not very important in the scheme of things. But Malcolm was certain to give him hell about it.

Levine lowered his binoculars and stared. A deep trumpeting sound reverberated through the air, so loud it hurt his ears. The ground began to shake, making the high hide sway back and forth precariously.

My God, he thought. They’re coming right for me. He bent over, and with fumbling fingers, searched his backpack for the radio.

Problems of Evolution

In the trailer, Thorne took the rehydrated meals out of the microwave, and passed the plates around the little table. Everyone unwrapped them, and began to eat. Malcolm poked his fork into the food. “What is this stuff?”

“Herb-baked chicken breast,” Thorne said.

Malcolm took a bite, and shook his head. “Isn’t technology wonderful?” he said. “They manage to make it taste just like cardboard.”

Malcolm looked at the two kids seated opposite him, who were eating energetically. Kelly glanced up at him, and gestured with her fork at the books strapped into a shelf beside the table. “One thing I don’t understand.”

“Only one?” Malcolm said.

“All this business about evolution,” she said. “Darwin wrote his book a long time ago, right?”

“Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859,” Malcolm said.

“And by now, everybody believes it, isn’t that right?”

“I think it’s fair to say that every scientist in the world agrees that evolution is a feature of life on earth,” Malcolm said. “And that we are descended from animal ancestors. Yes.”

“Okay,” Kelly said. “So, what’s the big deal now?”

Malcolm smiled. “The big deal,” he said, “is that everybody agrees evolution occurs, but nobody understands how it works. There are big problems with the theory. And more and more scientists are admitting it.”

Malcolm pushed his plate away. “You have to track the theory,” he said, “over a couple of hundred years. Start with Baron Georges Cuvier: the most famous anatomist in the world in his day, living in the intellectual center of the world, Paris. Around 1800, people began digging up old bones, and Cuvier realized that they belonged to animals no longer found on earth. That was a problem, because back in 1800, everybody believed that all the animal species ever created were still alive. The idea seemed reasonable because the earth was thought to be only a few thousand years old. And because God, who had created all the animals, would never let any of his creations become extinct. So extinction was agreed to be impossible. Cuvier agonized over these dug-up bones, but he finally concluded that God or no God, many animals had become extinct—as a result, he thought, of worldwide catastrophes, like Noah’s flood.”

“Okay …”

“So Cuvier reluctantly came to believe in extinction,” Malcolm said, “but he never accepted evolution. In Cuvier’s mind, evolution didn’t occur. Some animals died and some survived, but none evolved. In his view, animals didn’t change. Then along came Darwin, who said that animals did evolve, and that the dug-up bones were actually the extinct predecessors of living animals. The implications of Darwin’s idea upset lots of people. They didn’t like to think of God’s creations changing, and they didn’t like to think of monkeys in their family trees. It was embarrassing and offensive. The debate was fierce. But Darwin amassed a tremendous amount of factual data—he had made an overwhelming case. So gradually his idea of evolution was accepted by scientists, and by the world at large. But the question remained: how does evolution happen? For that, Darwin didn’t have a good answer.”

“Natural selection,” Arby said.

“Yes, that was Darwin’s explanation. The environment exerts pressure which favors certain animals, and they breed more often in subsequent generations, and that’s how evolution occurs. But as many people realized, natural selection isn’t really an explanation. It’s just a definition: if an animal succeeds, it must have been selected for. But what in the animal is favored? And how does natural selection actually operate? Darwin had no idea. And neither did anybody else for another fifty years.”

“But it’s genes,” Kelly said.

“Okay,” Malcolm said. “Fine. We come to the twentieth century. Mendel’s work with plants is rediscovered. Fischer and Wright do population studies. Pretty soon we know genes control heredity—whatever genes are. Remember, through the first half of the century, all during World War I and World War II, nobody had any idea what a gene was. After Watson and Crick in 1953, we knew that genes were nucleotides arranged in a double helix. Great. And we knew about mutation. So by the late twentieth century, we have a theory of natural selection which says that mutations arise spontaneously in genes, that the environment favors the mutations that are beneficial, and out of this selection process evolution occurs. It’s simple and straightforward. God is not at work. No higher organizing principle involved. In the end, evolution is just the result of a bunch of mutations that either survive or die. Right?”

“Right,” Arby said.

“But there are problems with that idea,” Malcolm said. “First of all, there’s a time problem. A single bacterium—the earliest form of life—has two thousand enzymes. Scientists have estimated how long it would take to randomly assemble those enzymes from a primordial soup. Estimates run from forty billion years to one hundred billion years. But the earth is only four billion years old. So, chance alone seems too slow. Particularly since we know bacteria actually appeared only four hundred million years after the earth began. Life appeared very fast—which is why some scientists have decided life on earth must be of extraterrestrial origin. Although I think that’s just evading the issue.”

“Okay …”

“Second, there’s the coordination problem. If you believe the current theory, then all the wonderful complexity of life is nothing but the accumulation of chance events—a bunch of genetic accidents strung together. Yet when we look closely at animals, it appears as if many elements must have evolved simultaneously. Take bats, which have echolocation—they navigate by sound. To do that, many things must evolve. Bats need a specialized apparatus to make sounds, they need specialized ears to hear echoes, they need specialized brains to interpret the sounds, and they need specialized bodies to dive and swoop and catch insects. If all these things don’t evolve simultaneously, there’s no advantage. And to imagine all these things happen purely by chance is like imagining that a tornado can hit a junkyard and assemble the parts into a working 747 airplane. It’s very hard to believe.”

“Okay,” Thorne said. “I agree.”

“Next problem. Evolution doesn’t always act like a blind force should. Certain environmental niches don’t get filled. Certain plants don’t get eaten. And certain animals don’t evolve much. Sharks haven’t changed for a hundred and sixty million years. Opossums haven’t changed since dinosaurs became extinct, sixty-five million years ago. The environments for these animals have changed dramatically, but the animals have remained almost the same. Not exactly the same, but almost. In other words, it appears they haven’t responded to their environment.”

“Maybe they’re still well adapted,” Arby said.

“Maybe. Or maybe there’s something else going on that we don’t understand.”

“Like what?”

“Like other rules that influence the outcome.”

Thorne said, “Are you saying evolution is directed?”

“No,” Malcolm said. “That’s Creationism and it’s wrong. Just plain wrong. But I am saying that natural selection acting on genes is probably not the whole story. It’s too simple. Other forces are also at work. The hemoglobin molecule is a protein that is folded like a sandwich around a central iron atom that binds oxygen. Hemoglobin expands and contracts when it takes on and gives up oxygen—like a tiny molecular lung. Now, we know the sequence of amino acids that make up hemoglobin. But we don’t know how to fold it. Fortunately, we don’t need to know that, because if you make the molecule, it folds all by itself. It organizes itself. And it turns out, again and again, that living things seem to have a self-organizing quality. Proteins fold. Enzymes interact. Cells arrange themselves to form organs and the organs arrange themselves to form a coherent individual. Individuals organize themselves to make a population. And populations organize themselves to make a coherent biosphere. From complexity theory, we’re starting to have a sense of how this self-organization may happen, and what it means. And it implies a major change in how we view evolution.”

“But,” Arby said, “in the end, evolution still must be the result of the environment acting on genes.”

“I don’t think it’s enough, Arb,” Malcolm said. “I think more is involved—I think there has to be more, even to explain how our own species arose.”

“About three million years ago,” Malcolm said, “some African apes that had been living in trees came down to the ground. There was nothing special about these apes. Their brains were small and they weren’t especially smart. They didn’t have claws or sharp teeth for weapons. They weren’t particularly strong, or fast. They were certainly no match for a leopard. But because they were short, they started standing upright on their hind legs, to see over the tall African grass. That’s how it began. Just some ordinary apes, looking out over the grass.

“As time went on, the apes stood upright more and more of the time. That left their hands free to do things. Like all apes, they were tool-users. Chimps, for example, use twigs to fish for termites. That sort of thing. As time went on, our ape ancestors developed more complex tools. That stimulated their brains to grow in size and complexity. It began a spiral: more complex tools provoked more complex brains which provoked more complex tools. And our brains literally exploded, in evolutionary terms. Our brains more than doubled in size in about a million years. And that caused problems for us.”

“Like what?”

“Like getting born, for one thing. Big brains can’t pass through the birth canal—which means that both mother and child die in childbirth. That’s no good. What’s the evolutionary response? To make human infants born very early in development, when their brains are still small enough to pass through the pelvis. It’s the marsupial solution—most of the growth occurs outside the mother’s body. A human child’s brain doubles during the first year of life. That’s a good solution to the problem of birth, but it creates other problems. It means that human children will be helpless long after birth. The infants of many mammals can walk minutes after they’re born. Others walk in a few days, or weeks. But human infants can’t walk for a full year. They can’t feed themselves for even longer. So one price of big brains was that our ancestors had to evolve new, stable social organizations to permit long-term child care, lasting many years. These big-brained, totally helpless children changed society. But that’s not the most important consequence.”

“No?”

“No. Being born in an immature state means that human infants have unformed brains. They don’t arrive with a lot of built-in, instinctive behavior. Instinctively, a newborn infant can suck and grasp, but that’s about all. Complex human behavior is not instinctive at all. So human societies had to develop education to train the brains of their children. To teach them how to act. Every human society expends tremendous time and energy teaching its children the right way to behave. You look at a simpler society, in the rain forest somewhere, and you find that every child is born into a network of adults responsible for helping to raise the child. Not only parents, but aunts and uncles and grandparents and tribal elders. Some teach the child to hunt or gather food or weave; some teach them about sex or war. But the responsibilities are clearly defined, and if a child does not have, say, a mother’s brother’s sister to do a specific teaching job, the people get together and appoint a substitute. Because raising children is, in a sense, the reason the society exists in the first place. It’s the most important thing that happens, and it’s the culmination of all the tools and language and social structure that has evolved. And eventually, a few million years later, we have kids using computers.

“Now, if this picture makes sense, where does natural selection act? Does it act on the body, enlarging the brain? Does it act on the developmental sequence, pushing the kids out early? Does it act on social behavior, provoking cooperation and child-caring? Or does it act everywhere all at once—on bodies, on development, and on social behavior?”

“Everywhere at once,” Arby said.

“I think so,” Malcolm said. “But there may also be parts of this story that happen automatically, the result of self-organization. For example, infants of all species have a characteristic appearance. Big eyes, big heads, small faces, uncoordinated movements. That’s true of kids and puppies and baby birds. And it seems to provoke adults of all species to act tenderly toward them. In a sense, you might say infant appearance seems to self-organize adult behavior. And in our case, a good thing, too.”

Thorne said, “What does that have to do with dinosaur extinction?”

“Self-organizing principles can act for better or worse. Just as self-organization can coordinate change, it can also lead a population into decline, and cause it to lose its edge. On this island, my hope is we’ll see self-organizing adaptations in the behavior of real dinosaurs—and it’ll tell us why they became extinct. In fact, I’m pretty sure we already know why the dinosaurs became extinct.”

The radio clicked. “Bravo,” Levine said, over the intercom. “I couldn’t have put it better myself. But perhaps you better see what is happening out here. The parasaurs are doing something very interesting, Ian.”

“What’s that?”

“Come and look.”

“Kids,” Malcolm said, “you stay here and watch the monitors.” He pressed the radio button. “Richard? We’re on our way.”

Parasaurs

Richard Levine gripped the railing of the high hide, and watched tensely. Directly ahead, coming into view over a low rise, he saw the magnificent head of a Parasaurolophus walkeri. The duck-billed hadrosaur’s skull was three feet long, but it was made larger by a long horned crest that extended backward high in the air.

As the animal approached, Levine could see the green mottling on the head. He saw the long powerful neck, the heavy body with its light-green underbelly. The parasaurolophus was twelve feet tall, and roughly the size of a large elephant. Its head was almost as high as the floor of the high hide. The animal moved steadily toward him, its footsteps thumping on the ground. Moments later, he saw a second head appear over the rise—then a third, and a fourth. The animals trumpeted, and walked in single file directly toward him.

Within moments, the lead animal was abreast of the hide. Levine held his breath as it passed. The animal stared at him, its large brown eye rolling to watch him. It licked its lips with a dark-purple tongue. The hide shook with its footsteps. And then it had passed, continuing on toward the jungle behind. Soon after, the second animal passed.

The third animal brushed against the structure, rocking it slightly. But the dinosaur did not seem to notice; it continued steadily on. So did the others. One by one, they disappeared, into the dense foliage behind the high hide. The earth ceased to vibrate. It was then that he saw the game trail, running past the high hide and into the jungle.

Levine sighed.

His body relaxed slowly. He picked up his binoculars and took a deep breath, calming himself. His panic faded. He began to feel better.

And then he thought: What are they doing? Where are they going? Because, as he considered it, the behavior of the parasaurs seemed extremely strange. They had been in a defensive cluster while they fed, but in movement they had shifted to single file, which broke the usual clumped herd pattern, and made every animal vulnerable to predation. Yet the behavior was clearly organized. Moving in single file must serve some purpose.

But what?

Now that they were within the jungle, the animals had begun making low trumpeting sounds of short duration. Again, he had the sense that this was some sort of vocalization to convey position. Perhaps for members to keep track of each other while they moved through the jungle, while they changed locations.

But why were they changing locations?

Where were they going? What were they doing?

He certainly couldn’t tell here, standing up in the high hide. He hesitated, listening to them. Then, in a decisive moment, he swung his leg over the railing and climbed quickly down the scaffolding.

Heat

She felt heat, and wet. Something rough scraped along her face, like sandpaper. It happened again, this roughness on her cheek. Sarah Harding coughed. Something dripped on her neck. She smelled an odd, sweetish odor, like fermenting African beer. There was a deep hissing sound. Then the rough scraping again, starting at her neck, moving up her cheek.

Slowly, she opened her eyes and stared up into the face of a horse. The big, dull eye of the horse peered down at her, with soft eyelashes. The horse was licking her with its tongue. It was almost pleasant, she thought, almost reassuring. Lying on her back in the mud, with a horse—

It wasn’t a horse.

The head was too narrow, she suddenly saw, the snout too tapered, the proportions all wrong. She turned to look and saw that it was a small head, leading to a surprisingly thick neck, and a heavy body—

She jumped up, scrambling to her knees. “Oh my God!”

Her sudden movement startled the big animal, which snorted in alarm, and moved slowly away. It walked a few steps down the muddy shore and then turned back, looking at her reproachfully.

But she could see it now: small head, thick neck, huge lumbering body, with a double row of pentagonal plates running along the crest of the back. A dragging tail, with spikes in it.

Harding blinked.

It couldn’t be.

Confused and dazed, her brain fumbled for the name of this creature, and it came back to her, all the way from childhood.

Stegosaurus.

It was a God damn stegosaurus.

In her astonishment, her mind went back to the glaring white hospital room, when she had visited Ian Malcolm in his delirium, when he mumbled the names of several dinosaurs. She had always had her suspicions. But even now, confronted by a living stegosaur, her immediate reaction was that it must be some kind of a trick. Sarah squinted at the animal, looking for the seam in the costume, the mechanical joints beneath the skin. But the skin was seamless, and the animal moved in an integrated, organic way. The eyes blinked slowly. Then the stegosaurus turned away from her, moved to the water’s edge, and lapped it with its large rough tongue.

The tongue was dark blue.

How could that be? Dark blue from venous blood? Was it cold-blooded? No. This animal moved much too smoothly; it had the assurance—and indifference—of a warm-blooded creature. Lizards and reptiles always seemed to be paying attention to the temperature of their surroundings. This creature didn’t behave that way at all. It stood in the shade, and lapped up the cold water, indifferent to it all.

She looked down at her shirt, saw the foamy spittle running down from her neck. It had drooled on her. She touched it with her fingers. It was warm.

It was warm-blooded, all right.

A stegosaurus.

She stared.

The stegosaurus’s skin had a pebbled texture, but it was not scaly, like a reptile’s. It was more like the skin of a rhino, she thought. Or of a warthog. Except it was entirely hairless, without the bristles of a pig.

The stegosaurus moved slowly. It had a peaceful, rather stupid air. And it probably was stupid, she thought, looking again at the head. The braincase was much smaller than that of a horse. Very small for the body weight.

She got to her feet, and groaned. Her body ached. Every limb and muscle was sore. Her legs trembled. She took a breath.

A few yards away, the stegosaurus paused, glanced at her, taking in her new upright appearance. When she did not move, it became indifferent once again, and returned to drinking from the river.

“I’ll be damned,” she said.

She looked at her watch. It was one-thirty in the afternoon, the sun still high overhead. She couldn’t use the sun to navigate, and the afternoon was very hot. She decided she had better start walking, and try and find Malcolm and Thorne. Barefooted, moving stiffly, her muscles aching, she headed into the jungle, away from the river.

After walking half an hour, she was very thirsty, but she had trained herself to go without water for long periods in the African savannah. She continued on, indifferent to her own discomfort. As she approached the top of a ridge, she came to a game trail, a wide muddy track through the jungle. It was easier walking along the trail, and she had been following it for about fifteen minutes when she heard an excited yelping from somewhere ahead. It reminded her of dogs, and she proceeded cautiously.

Moments later, there was a crashing sound in the underbrush, coming from several directions at once, and suddenly a dark-green, lizard-like animal about four feet high burst through the foliage at terrific speed, shrieked, and leapt over her. She ducked instinctively, and hardly had time to recover before a second animal appeared and raced past her. Within instants, a whole herd of animals was running past her on all sides, yelping in fear, and then the next one brushed against her and knocked her over. She fell in the mud as other animals leapt and crashed around her.

A few feet ahead on the trail she saw a large tree with low-hanging branches. She acted without thinking, jumping to her feet, grabbing the branch, and swinging up. She reached safety just as a new dinosaur, with sharp-clawed feet, rushed through the mud beneath her, and chased after the fleeing green creatures. As this animal went away from her, she glimpsed a dark body, six feet tall, with reddish stripes like a tiger. Soon after, a second striped animal appeared, then a third—a pack of predators, hissing and snarling, as they pursued the green dinosaurs.

From her years in the field, she found herself automatically counting the animals that rushed past her. By her count, there were nine striped predators, and that immediately piqued her interest. It made no sense, she thought. As soon as the last of the predators was gone, she dropped down to the ground and hurried to follow them. It occurred to her that it might be foolish to do so, but her curiosity overcame her.

She chased the tiger-dinosaurs up a hill, but even before she reached the crest she could tell from the snarls and growls that they had already brought an animal down. At the crest, she looked down on their kill.

But it was like no kill she had ever seen in Africa. On the Seronera plain, a kill site had its own organization which was quite predictable, and in a way was almost stately. The biggest predators, lions or hyenas, were closest to the carcass, feeding with their young. Farther out, waiting their turn, were the vultures and marabou storks, and still farther out, the jackals and other small scavengers circled warily. After the big predators finished, the smaller animals moved in. Different animals ate different parts of the bodies: the hyenas and vultures ate bones; the jackals nibbled the carcass clean. This was the pattern at any kill, and as a result there was very little squabbling or fighting around the food.

But here, she saw pandemonium—a feeding frenzy. The fallen animal was thickly covered with striped predators, all furiously ripping the flesh of the carcass, with frequent pauses to snarl and fight with each other. Their fights were openly vicious—one predator bit the adjacent animal, inflicting a deep flank wound. Immediately, several other predators snapped at the same animal, which limped away, hissing and bleeding, badly wounded. Once at the periphery, the wounded animal retaliated by biting the tail of another creature, again causing a serious wound.

A young juvenile, about half the size of the others, kept pushing forward, trying to get at a bit of the carcass, but the adults did not make room for it. Instead, they snarled and snapped in fury. The youngster was frequently obliged to hop back nimbly, keeping its distance from the razor-sharp fangs of the grownups. Harding saw no infants at all. This was a society of vicious adults.

As she watched the big predators, their heads and bodies smeared in blood, she noticed the crisscross pattern of healed scars on their flanks and necks. These were obviously quick, intelligent animals, yet they fought continually. Was that the way their social organization had evolved? If so, it was a rare event.

Animals of many species fought for food, territory, and sex, but these fights most often involved display and ritual aggression; serious injury seldom occurred. There were exceptions, of course. When male hippos fought to take over a harem, they often severely wounded other males. But in any case, nothing matched what she saw now.

As she watched, the wounded animal at the edge of the kill slunk forward and bit another adult, which snarled and leapt at it, slashing with its long toe-claw. In a flash, the injured predator was eviscerated, coils of pale intestine slipping out through a wide gash. The animal fell howling to the ground, and immediately three adults turned away from the kill and jumped onto its newly fallen body, and began to tear the animal’s flesh with rapacious intensity.

Harding closed her eyes, and turned away. This was a different world, and one she did not understand at all. In a daze, she headed back down the hill, moving quietly, carefully away from the kill.

Noise

The Ford Explorer glided quietly forward along the jungle path. They were following a game trail on the ridge above the valley, heading down toward the high hide, in the valley below.

Thorne drove. He said to Malcolm, “You were saying earlier that you knew why the dinosaurs became extinct.…”

“Well, I’m pretty sure I do,” Malcolm said. “The basic situation is simple enough.” He shifted in his seat. “Dinosaurs arose in the Triassic, about two hundred and twenty-eight million years ago. They proliferated throughout the Jurassic and the Cretaceous periods that followed. They were the dominant life form on this planet for about a hundred and fifty million years—which is a very long time.”

“Considering we’ve been here for only three million,” Eddie said.

“Let’s not put on airs,” Malcolm said. “Some puny apes have been here for three million years. We haven’t. Recognizable human beings have only been on this planet for thirty-five thousand years,” he said. “That’s how long it’s been since our ancestors painted caves in France and Spain, drawing pictures of game to invoke success in the hunt. Thirty-five thousand years. In the history of the earth, that’s nothing at all. We’ve just arrived.”

“Okay …”

“And of course, even thirty-five thousand years ago, we were already making species extinct. Cavemen killed so much game that animals became extinct on several continents. There used to be lions and tigers in Europe. There used to be giraffes and rhinos in Los Angeles. Hell, ten thousand years ago, the ancestors of Native Americans hunted the woolly mammoth to extinction. This is nothing new, this human tendency—”

“Ian.”

“Well, it’s a fact, although your modern airheads think it’s all so brand-new—”

“Ian. You were talking about dinosaurs.”

“Right. Dinosaurs. Anyway, during a hundred and fifty million years on this planet, dinosaurs were so successful that by the Cretaceous there were twenty-one major groups of them. A few groups, like the camarasaurs and fabrosaurs, had died out. But the overwhelming majority of dinosaur groups were still active throughout the Cretaceous. And then, suddenly, about sixty-five million years ago, every single group became extinct. And only the birds remained. So. The question is—What was that?”

“I thought you knew,” Thorne said.

“No. I mean, what was that sound? Did you hear something?”

“No,” Thorne said.

“Stop the car,” Malcolm said.

Thorne stopped the car, and clicked off the engine. They rolled down the windows and felt the still, midday heat. There was almost no breeze. They listened for a while.

Thorne shrugged. “I don’t hear anything. What did you think you—”

“Sssh,” Malcolm said. He cupped his hand to his ear and put his head out the window, listening intently. After a moment, he came back in. “I could have sworn I heard an engine.”

“An engine? You mean an internal-combustion engine?”

“Right.” He pointed to the east. “It sounded like it was coming from over there.”

They listened again, and heard nothing.

Thorne shook his head. “I can’t imagine a gas engine here, Ian. There’s no gas to run one.”

The radio clicked. “Dr. Malcolm?” It was Arby, in the trailer.

“Yes, Arby.”

“Who else is here? On the island?”

“What do you mean?”

“Turn on your monitor.”

Thorne flicked on the dashboard monitor. They saw a view from one of the security cameras. The view looked down into the narrow, steep east valley. They saw the slope of a hillside, dark beneath the trees. A tree branch blocked much of the frame. But the view was still, silent. There was no sign of activity.

“What did you see, Arby?”

“Just watch.”

Through the leaves, Thorne saw a flash of khaki, then another. He realized it was a person, half-walking, half-sliding, down the steep jungle slope toward the floor below. Small compact frame, short dark hair.

“I’ll be damned,” Malcolm said, smiling.

“You know who that is?”

“Yes, of course. It’s Sarah.”

“Well, we better go get her.” Thorne reached for the radio, pressed the button. “Richard,” he said.

There was no answer.

“Richard? Are you reading?”

There was no answer.

Malcolm sighed. “Great. He’s not answering. Probably decided to go for a walk. Pursuing his research …”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Thorne said. “Eddie, unhook the motorcycle and go see what Levine’s doing now. Take a Lindstradt with you. We’ll go pick up Sarah.”

Trail

Levine followed the game trail, moving deeper into the darkness of the jungle. The parasaurs were somewhere up ahead, making a lot of noise as they crashed through the ferns and palms on the jungle floor. At least now he understood why they had formed into a single file: there was no other practical way to move through the dense growth of the rain forest.

Their vocalizations had never stopped, but Levine noticed they were taking on a different character—more high-pitched, more excited. He hurried forward, pushing past wet palm fronds taller than he was, following the beaten trail. As he listened to the cries of the animals ahead, he also began to notice a distinctive odor, pungent and sweet-sour. He had the feeling the odor was growing stronger.

But up ahead, something was happening, there was no doubt about it. The parasaur vocalizations were now clipped, almost barking sounds. He sensed in them an agitated quality. But what could agitate an animal twelve feet high and thirty feet long?

His curiosity overwhelmed him. Levine began to run through the jungle, shoving aside palms, leaping over fallen trees. In the foliage ahead, he heard a hissing sound, a sort of spattering, and then one of the parasaurs gave a long, low trumpeting cry.

Eddie Carr drove the motorcycle up to the high hide, and stopped. Levine was gone. He looked at the ground around the hide, and saw many deep animal footprints in the ground. The prints were large, about two feet in diameter, and they seemed to be going off into the jungle behind the hide.

He scanned the ground, and saw fresh bootmarks as well. They had an Asolo tread; he recognized them as Levine’s. In some places the bootmarks disrupted the edge of the animal footprints, which meant that they had been made afterward. The bootmarks also led into the forest.

Eddie Carr swore. The last thing he wanted to do was to go into that jungle. The very idea gave him the creeps. But what choice was there? He had to get Levine back. That guy, he thought, was getting to be a real problem. Eddie unshouldered the rifle, and set it laterally across the handlebars of the motorcycle. Then he twisted the grips, and silently, the bike moved forward, into darkness.

Heart pounding with excitement, Levine pushed past the last of the big palms. He stopped abruptly. Directly ahead of him, the tail of a parasaur swung back and forth above his head. The animal’s hindquarters were turned toward him. And a thick stream of urine gushed from the posterior pubis, spattering on the ground below. Levine jumped back, avoiding the stream. Beyond the nearest animal, he saw a clearing in the jungle, trampled flat by countless animal feet. The parasaurs had located themselves at various positions within this clearing, and they were all urinating together.

So they were latrine animals, he thought. That was fascinating, and totally unexpected.

Many contemporary animals, including rhinos and deer, preferred to relieve themselves at particular spots. And many times, the behavior of herds was coordinated. Latrine behavior was generally considered to be a method of marking territory. But whatever the reason, no one had ever suspected that dinosaurs acted in this way.

As Levine watched, the parasaurs finished urinating, and each moved a few feet to the side. Then they defecated, again in unison. Each parasaur produced a large mound of straw-colored spoor. This was accompanied by low trumpeting from each animal in the herd—along with an enormous quantity of expelled flatus, redolent of methane.

Behind him, a voice whispered, “Very nice.”

He turned, and saw Eddie Carr sitting on the motorcycle. He was waving his hand in front of his face. “Dino farts,” he said. “Better not light a match around here, you’ll blow the place up.…”

“Ssssh,” Levine hissed angrily, shaking his head. He turned back to the parasaurs. This was no time to be interrupted by a vulgar young fool. Several of the animals bent their heads down, and began to lick the puddles of urine. No doubt they wanted to recover lost nutrients, he thought. Perhaps salt. Or perhaps hormones. Or perhaps it was something seasonal. Or perhaps—

Levine edged forward.

They knew so little about these creatures. They didn’t even know the most basic facts about their lives—how they ate, how they eliminated, how they slept and bred. A whole world of intricate, interlocking behaviors had evolved in these long-vanished animals. Understanding them now could be the work of a lifetime for dozens of scientists. But that would probably never happen. All he could hope to do was make a few conjectures, a few simple deductions that skimmed the surface of the complexity of their lives.

The parasaurs trumpeted, and headed deeper into the forest. Levine moved forward to follow them.

“Dr. Levine,” Eddie said quietly. “Get on the bike. Now.”

Levine ignored him, but as the big animals departed, he saw dozens of tiny green dinosaurs leap chittering out into the clearing. He realized at once what they were: Procompsognathus triassicus. Small scavenger, found by Fraas in 1913, in Bavaria. Levine stared, fascinated. Of course he knew the animal well, but only from reconstructions, because there were no complete skeletons of Procompsognathus anywhere in the world. Ostrom had done the most complete studies, but he had to work with a skeleton that was badly crushed, and fragmentary. The tail, neck, and arms were all missing from the animals Ostrom described. Yet here the procompsognathids were, fully formed and active, hopping around like so many chickens. As he watched, the compys began to eat the fresh dung, and drink what was left of the urine. Levine frowned. Was that part of ordinary scavenger behavior?

Levine wasn’t sure.…

He edged forward, to look at them more closely.

“Dr. Levine!” Eddie whispered.

It was interesting that the compys only ate fresh dung, not the dried remnants that were everywhere in the clearing. Whatever nutrients they were obtaining from the dung, it must only be present in fresh specimens. That suggested a protein or hormone that would degrade over time. Probably he should obtain a fresh sample for analysis. He reached into his shirt pocket, and withdrew a plastic baggie. He moved among the compys, which seemed indifferent to his presence.

He crouched down by the nearest dung pile, and reached slowly forward.

“Dr. Levine!”

He glanced back, annoyed, and in that moment one of the compys leapt forward and bit his hand. Another jumped onto his shoulder and bit his ear. Levine yelled, and stood up. The compys hopped onto the ground and scampered away.

“Damn it!” he said.

Eddie drove up on the motorcycle. “That’s enough,” he said. “Get on the damn bike. We’re getting out of here.”

Nest

The red Jeep Wrangler came to a stop. Directly ahead, the game trail they had been following continued through the foliage, to a clearing beyond. The game trail was wide and muddy, trampled flat by large animals. They could see large, deep footprints in the mud.

From the clearing, they heard a low honking noise, like the sound of very large geese. Dodgson said, “Okay. Give me the box.”

King didn’t answer.

Baselton said, “What box?”

Without taking his eyes off the clearing, Dodgson said, “There’s a black box on the seat beside you, and a battery pack. Give them to me.”

Baselton grunted. “It’s heavy.”

“That’s because of the cone magnets.” Dodgson reached back, took the box, which was made of black anodized metal. It was the size of a shoebox, except it ended in a flaring cone. Underneath was mounted a pistol grip. Dodgson clipped a battery pack to his belt, and plugged it into the box. Then he picked the box up by the pistol grip. There was a knob at the back, facing him, and a graduated dial.

Dodgson said, “Batteries charged?”

“They’re charged,” King said.

“Okay,” Dodgson said. “I’ll go first, into the nest area. I’ll adjust the box, and get rid of the animals. You two follow behind me, and once the animals are gone, you each take an egg from the nest. Then you leave, and bring them back to the car. I’ll come back last. Then we all drive off. Got it?”

“Right,” Baselton said.

“Okay,” King said. “What kind of dinosaurs are these?”

“I have no fucking idea,” Dodgson said, climbing out of the car. “And it doesn’t make any difference. Just follow the procedure.” He closed the door softly.

The others got out quietly, and they started forward, down the wet trail. Their feet squished in the mud. The sound from the clearing continued. To Dodgson, it sounded like a lot of animals.

He pushed aside the last of the ferns and saw them.

It was a large nesting site, with perhaps four or five low earthen mounds, covered in grasses. The mounds were about seven feet wide, and three feet deep. There were twenty beige-colored adults around the mounds—a whole herd of dinosaurs, surrounding the nesting site. And the adults were big, thirty feet long and ten feet high, all honking and snorting.

“Oh, my God,” Baselton said, staring.

Dodgson shook his head. “They’re maiasaurs,” he whispered. “This is going to be a piece of cake.”

Maiasaurs had been named by paleontologist Jack Horner. Before Horner, scientists assumed that dinosaurs abandoned their eggs, as most reptiles did. Those assumptions fitted the old picture of dinosaurs as cold-blooded, reptilian creatures. Like reptiles, they were thought to be solitary; murals on museum walls rarely showed more than one example from each species—a brontosaurus here, a stegosaurus or a triceratops there, wading through the swamps. But Horner’s excavations in the badlands of Montana provided clear, unambiguous evidence that at least one species of hadrosaurs had engaged in complex nesting and parenting behavior. Horner incorporated that behavior in the name he gave these creatures: maiasaur meant “good-mother lizard.”

Watching them now, Dodgson could see the maiasaurs were indeed attentive parents, the big adults circling the nests, moving carefully to step outside the shallow earthen mounds. The beige maiasaurs were duck-billed dinosaurs; they had large heads that ended in a broad, flattened snout, rather like the bill of a duck.

They were taking mouthfuls of grass, and dropping it on the eggs in the mounds. This was, he knew, a way to regulate the temperature of the eggs. If the huge animals sat on the eggs, they would crush them. So instead they put a layer of grass over the eggs, which trapped heat and kept the eggs at a more constant temperature. The animals worked steadily.

“They’re huge,” Baselton said.

“They’re nothing but oversized cows,” Dodgson said. Although the maiasaurs were large, they were plant-eaters, and they had the docile, slightly stupid manner of cows. “Ready? Here we go.”

He lifted the box like a gun, and stepped forward, into view.

Dodgson expected a big reaction when the maiasaurs saw him, but there was none at all. They hardly seemed to notice him. One or two adults looked over, stared with dumb eyes, and then looked away. The animals continued to drop grass on the eggs, which were pale white, spherical, and nearly two feet long. Each was about twice the size of an ostrich egg. About the size of a small beach ball. No animals had hatched yet.

King and Baselton stepped out, and stood beside him in the clearing. Still the maiasaurs ignored them.

“Amazing,” Baselton said.

“Fine for us,” Dodgson said. And he turned on the box.

A continuous, high-pitched shriek filled the clearing. The maiasaurs immediately turned toward the sound, honking and lifting their heads. They seemed agitated, confused. Dodgson twisted the dial, and the shriek became higher, ear-splitting.

The maiasaurs bobbed their heads, and moved away from the painful sound. They clustered at the far end of the clearing. Several of the animals urinated in alarm. A few of them moved away into the foliage, abandoning the nest. They were agitated, but they stayed away.

“Go now,” Dodgson said.

King stepped into the nearest nest, and grunted as he picked up an egg. His arms hardly reached around the huge sphere. The maiasaurs honked at him, but none of the adults moved forward. Then Baselton went into the nest, took an egg, and followed King back to the car.

Dodgson walked backward, holding the box on the adults. At the edge of the clearing, he turned the sound off.

At once the maiasaurs came back, honking loudly and repeatedly. But as they returned to the nests, it seemed as if the adults forgot what had just happened. Within a few moments, they ceased honking, and went back to dropping grass over the eggs. They ignored Dodgson as he left and headed back along the game trail.

Stupid animals, Dodgson thought, as he went to the car. Baselton and King were setting the eggs into big Styrofoam containers in the back, and fitting the foam packing around them carefully. Both men were grinning like kids.

“That was amazing!”

“Great! Fantastic!”

“What’d I tell you?” Dodgson said. “Nothing to it.” He glanced at his watch. “At this rate, we’ll finish in less than four hours.”

He climbed behind the steering wheel and turned on the engine. Baselton got into the back seat. King got in the passenger seat and took out the map.

“Next,” Dodgson said.

The High Hide

“I tell you, it’s fine,” Levine said irritably. He was sweating in the stifling heat beneath the aluminum roof of the high hide. “Look, it didn’t even break the skin.” He held out his hand. There was a red semicircle where the compy had pressed its teeth into the skin, but that was all.

Beside him, Eddie said, “Yeah, well, your ear is bleeding a little.”

“I don’t feel anything. It can’t be bad.”

“No, it’s not bad,” Eddie said, opening the first-aid kit. “But I better clean it up.”

“I prefer,” Levine said, “to get on with my observations.” The dinosaurs were barely a quarter-mile away from him, and he could see them well. In the still midday air, he could hear them breathe.

He could hear them breathe.

Or at least he could, if this young man would leave him alone. “Look,” Levine said, “I know what I’m doing here. You came in at the end of a very interesting and successful experiment. I actually called the dinosaurs to me, by imitating their cry.”

“You did?” Eddie said.

“Yes, I did. That was what led them into the forest in the first place. So I hardly think that I need your assistance—”

“The thing is,” Eddie said, “you got some of that dino shit on your ear and there’s a couple of little punctures. I’ll just clean it off for you.” He soaked a gauze pad with disinfectant. “May sting a little.”

“I don’t care, I have other—Ow!”

“Stop moving,” Eddie said. “It’ll only take a second.”

“It’s absolutely unnecessary.”

“If you just stand still, it’ll be done. There.” He took the gauze away. Levine saw brown and a faint streak of red. Just as he suspected, the injury was trivial. He reached up and touched his ear. It didn’t hurt at all.

Levine squinted out at the plain, as Eddie packed up the first-aid case.

“Jeez, it’s hot up here,” Eddie said.

“Yes,” Levine said, shrugging.

“Sarah Harding arrived, and I think they took her back to the trailer. You want to go back now?”

“I can’t imagine why,” Levine said.

“I just thought you might want to say hello or something,” Eddie said.

“My work is here,” Levine said. He turned away, raised his binoculars to his eyes.

“So,” Eddie said. “You don’t want to come back?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Levine said, staring through binoculars. “Not in a million years. Not in sixty-five million years.”

Trailer

Kelly Curtis listened to the sound of the shower. She couldn’t believe it. She stared at the muddy clothes tossed casually on the bed. Shorts and a khaki short-sleeve shirt.

Sarah Harding’s actual clothes.

She couldn’t help it. Kelly reached out and touched them. She noticed how the fabric was worn and frayed. Buttons sewn back on; they didn’t match. And there were some reddish streaks near the pocket that she thought must be old bloodstains. She reached down and touched the fabric—

“Kelly?”

Sarah was calling to her, from the shower.

She remembered my name.

“Yes?” Kelly said, her voice betraying her nervousness.

“Is there any shampoo?”

“I’ll look, Dr. Harding,” Kelly said, opening drawers hastily. The men had all gone into the next compartment, leaving her alone with Sarah while she washed. Kelly searched desperately, opening the drawers, slamming them shut again.

“Listen,” Sarah called, “it’s okay if you can’t find any.”

“I’m looking.…”

“Is there any dishwashing liquid?”

Kelly paused. There was a green plastic bottle by the sink. “Yes, Dr. Harding, but—”

“Give it to me. It’s all the same stuff. I don’t care.” The hand reached out, past the shower curtain. Kelly handed it to her. “And my name is Sarah.”

“Okay, Dr. Harding.”

“Sarah.”

“Okay, Sarah.”

Sarah Harding was a regular person. Very informal and normal.

Entranced, Kelly sat on the seat in the kitchen and waited, swinging her feet, in case Dr. Harding—Sarah—needed anything else. She listened to Sarah humming “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair.” After a few moments, the shower turned off, and her hand reached out and took the towel on the hook. And then she came out, wrapped in the towel.

Sarah ran her fingers through her short hair, which seemed to be all the attention she gave to her appearance. “That feels better. Boy, this is a plush field trailer. Doc really did a great job.”

“Yes,” she said. “It’s nice.”

She smiled at Kelly. “How old are you, Kelly?”

“Thirteen.”

“What is that, eighth grade?”

“Seventh.”

“Seventh grade,” Sarah said, thoughtfully.

Kelly said, “Dr. Malcolm left some clothes for you. He said he thought they’d fit.” She pointed to a clean pair of shorts and a tee shirt.

“Whose are these?”

“I think they’re Eddie’s.”

Sarah held them up. “Might work.” She took them around the corner, into the sleeping area, and started getting dressed. She said, “What are you going to do when you grow up?”

“I don’t know,” Kelly said.

“That’s a very good answer.”

“It is?” Kelly’s mother was always pushing her to get a part-time job, to decide what she wanted to do with her life.

“Yes,” Sarah said. “Nobody smart knows what they want to do until they get into their twenties or thirties.”

“Oh.”

“What do you like to study?”

“Actually, uh, I like math,” she said, in a sort of guilty voice.

Sarah must have heard her tone, because she said, “What’s wrong with math?”

“Well, girls aren’t good at it. I mean, you know.”

“No, I don’t know.” Sarah’s voice was flat.

Kelly felt panic. She had been experiencing this warm feeling with Sarah Harding, but now she sensed it was dissolving away, as if she had given a wrong answer to a disapproving teacher. She decided not to say anything else. She waited in silence.

After a moment Sarah came out again, wearing Eddie’s baggy clothes. She sat down and started putting on a pair of boots. She moved in a very normal, matter-of-fact way. “What did you mean, girls aren’t good at mathematics?”

“Well, that’s what everybody says.”

“Everybody like who?”

“My teachers.”

Sarah sighed. “Great,” she said, shaking her head. “Your teachers …”

“And the other kids call me a brainer. Stuff like that. You know.” Kelly just blurted it out. She couldn’t believe that she was saying all this to Sarah Harding, whom she hardly knew at all except from articles and pictures, but here she was, telling her all this personal stuff. All these things that upset her.

Sarah just smiled cheerfully. “Well, if they say that, you must be pretty good at math, huh?”

“I guess.”

She smiled. “That’s wonderful, Kelly.”

“But the thing is, boys don’t like girls who are too smart.”

Sarah’s eyebrows went up. “Is that so?”

“Well, that’s what everybody says.…”

“Like who?”

“Like my mom.”

“Uh-huh. And she probably knows what she’s talking about.”

“I don’t know,” Kelly admitted. “My mom only dates jerks, actually.”

“So she could be wrong?” Sarah asked, glancing up at Kelly as she tied her laces.

“I guess.”

“Well, in my experience, some men like smart women, and some don’t. It’s like everything else in the world.” She stood up. “You know about George Schaller?”

“Sure. He studied pandas.”

“Right. Pandas, and before that, snow leopards and lions and gorillas. He’s the most important animal researcher in the twentieth century—and you know how he works?”

Kelly shook her head.

“Before he goes into the field, George reads everything that’s ever been written about the animal he’s going to study. Popular books, newspaper accounts, scientific papers, everything. Then he goes out and observes the animal for himself. And you know what he usually finds?”

She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.

“That nearly everything that’s been written or said is wrong. Like the gorilla. George studied mountain gorillas ten years before Dian Fossey ever thought of it. And he found that what was believed about gorillas was exaggerated, or misunderstood, or just plain fantasy—like the idea that you couldn’t take women on gorilla expeditions, because the gorillas would rape them. Wrong. Everything … just … wrong.”

Sarah finished tying her boots, and stood.

“So, Kelly, even at your young age, there’s something you might as well learn now. All your life people will tell you things. And most of the time, probably ninety-five percent of the time, what they’ll tell you will be wrong.”

Kelly said nothing. She felt oddly disheartened to hear this.

“It’s a fact of life,” Sarah said. “Human beings are just stuffed full of misinformation. So it’s hard to know who to believe. I know how you feel.”

“You do?”

“Sure. My mom used to tell me I’d never amount to anything.” She smiled. “So did some of my professors.”

“Really?” It didn’t seem possible.

“Oh yes,” Sarah said. “As a matter of fact—”

From the other section of the trailer, they heard Malcolm say, “No! No! Those idiots! They could ruin everything!”

Sarah immediately turned, and went into the other section. Kelly jumped off the seat, and hurried after her.

The men were all clustered around the monitor. Everyone was talking at once, and they seemed to be upset. “This is terrible,” Malcolm was saying. “Terrible!”

Thorne said, “Is that a Jeep?”

“They had a red Jeep,” Harding said, coming up to look.

“Then it’s Dodgson,” Malcolm said. “Damn!”

“What’s he doing here?”

“I can guess.”

Kelly pushed through to get a look. On the screen, she saw foliage, and intermittent flashes of a red-and-black vehicle.

“Where are they now?” Malcolm said to Arby.

“I think they’re in the east valley,” Arby said. “Near where we found Dr. Levine.”

The radio clicked. Levine’s voice said, “Do you mean there are now other people on the island?”

“Yes, Richard.”

“Well, you better go stop them, before they mess everything up.”

“I know. Do you want to come back?”

“Not without a compelling reason. Inform me if one arises.” And his radio clicked off.

Harding stared at the screen, watching the Jeep. “That’s them, all right,” she said. “That’s your friend Dodgson.”

“He’s not my friend,” Malcolm said. He got up, wincing in pain from his leg. “Let’s go,” he said. “We have to stop these bastards. There’s no time to waste.”

Nest

The red Jeep Wrangler rolled softly to a stop. Directly ahead was a wall of dense foliage. But through it they could see sunlight, from the clearing beyond.

Dodgson sat quietly in the car, listening. King turned to him, about to speak, but Dodgson held up his hand, gesturing to him to be silent.

Then he heard it clearly—a low rumbling growl, almost a purr. It was coming from beyond the foliage ahead. It sounded like the biggest jungle cat he had ever heard. And intermittently, he felt a slight vibration, hardly anything, but enough to make the car keys clink against the steering column. As he felt that vibration, it slowly dawned on him: It’s walking.

Something very big. Walking.

Beside him, King was staring forward in astonishment; his mouth hung open. Dodgson glanced back at Baselton; the professor was gripping the seat with white fingers, as he listened to the sound.

A shadow moved across the ferns directly ahead. Judging by the shadow, the animal was twenty feet high, and forty feet long. It walked on its hind legs, and had a large body, a short neck, a very big head.

A tyrannosaur.

Dodgson hesitated, staring at the shadow. His heart was pounding in his chest. He considered going on to the next nest, but he was confident that the box would work here, too. He said, “Let’s get this over with. Give me the box.”

Baselton handed him the box, just as he had done before.

Dodgson said, “Charged?”

“Batteries are charged,” King said.

“Okay,” he said. “Here we go. Exactly the same as before. I’ll go first, you two follow, and bring the eggs back to the car. Ready?”

“Ready,” Baselton said.

King did not answer. He was still staring at the shadow. “What kind of a dinosaur is that?”

“That’s a tyrannosaurus.”

“Oh Jesus,” King said.

“A tyrannosaurus?” Baselton said.

“It doesn’t matter what it is,” Dodgson said irritably. “Just follow the plan, like before. Everybody ready?”

“Just a minute,” Baselton said.

King said, “What if it doesn’t work?”

“We already know it works,” Dodgson said.

“There’s a rather curious fact about tyrannosaurs that was recently reported,” Baselton said. “A paleontologist named Roxton did a study of the tyrannosaur braincase, and concluded that they have a brain not much different from a frog’s, although of course much bigger. The implication was their nervous systems were adapted to motion only. They can’t see you if you stand still. Stationary objects become invisible to them.”

“Are you sure about that?” King said.

Baselton said, “That was the report. And it makes perfect sense. One can’t forget that dinosaurs, for all their intimidating size, were actually rather primitive intellects. It’s quite logical that a tyrannosaur would have the mental equipment of a frog.”

“I don’t see why we’re rushing into this,” King said, nervously. He stared forward. “It’s much bigger than the other ones.”

“So what?” Dodgson said. “You heard what George said. It’s just a big frog. Let’s get it done. Get out of the fucking car. And don’t slam the doors.”

George Baselton had felt quite good and authoritative, recalling that obscure article from the journals. He had been in his accustomed role, dispensing information to people who lacked it. Now that he approached the nest, he was astonished to notice that his knees had begun to tremble. His legs felt like rubber. He had always thought that was a figure of speech. He was alarmed to realize it could be literally true. He bit his lip, and forced himself under control. He was not, he told himself, going to show fear. He was the master of this situation.

Dodgson was already moving ahead, holding the black box like a gun in his hand. Baselton glanced over at King, who was deathly pale and sweating. He looked on the verge of collapse; he moved forward slowly. Baselton walked alongside him. Making sure he was all right.

Up ahead, Dodgson gave a final glance back, waved to Baselton and King to catch up. He glared at both of them, and then he stepped through the foliage into the clearing.

Baselton saw the tyrannosaur. No—there were two! They stood on both sides of a mud mound, two adults, twenty feet high on their hind legs, powerful, dark red, with big vicious jaws. Like the maiasaurs, the animals stared at Dodgson for a moment, a dumb stare, as if amazed to see an intruder. And then the tyrannosaurs roared in fury. An incredible, bellowing, air-shaking roar.

Dodgson lifted the box, pointed it at the animals. Immediately, a continuous, high-pitched shriek filled the clearing.

The tyrannosaurs roared in response, and lowered their heads, extending their necks forward, snapping their jaws, preparing to attack. They were huge—and they were unaffected by the sound. They started to come around the mound, toward Dodgson. The earth shook as they moved.

“Oh fuck,” King said.

But Dodgson stayed cool. He twisted the dial. Baselton clapped his hands over his ears. The shriek became higher, louder, ear-splitting, incredibly painful. The response was immediate: the tyrannosaurs stepped back as if they had received a physical blow. They ducked their heads. They blinked their eyes rapidly. The sound seemed to vibrate in the air. They roared again, but weakly now, without conviction. A terrible screaming came from inside the mud nest.

Dodgson moved forward, pointing the box in the air, directly at the animals. The tyrannosaurs backed away, looking into the nest, then to Dodgson. They swung their heads back and forth rapidly, as if trying to clear their ears. Dodgson calmly adjusted the dial. The sound went higher. It was now excruciating.

Dodgson began to climb the mud mound of the nest. Baselton and King scrambled up, following him. Baselton found himself looking down into a nest with four mottled white eggs, and two young babies that looked for all the world like scrawny oversized turkeys. Anyway, some kind of gigantic baby birds.

The two tyrannosaurs were at the far end of the clearing, held away by the sound. Like the maiasaurs, they urinated in agitation. They stomped their feet. But they did not come closer.

Over the ear-splitting shriek of the box, Dodgson shouted, “Get the eggs!” In a daze, King stumbled down into the nest, grabbing the nearest egg. He fumbled it in his shaking hands; the egg flew into the air; he caught it again, and lurched back. He stepped on the leg of one of the babies, which screamed in fear and pain.

At this, the parents tried to come forward again, drawn by the infant’s cries. King hastily clambered out of the nest, ducked away through the foliage. Baselton watched him go.

“George!” Dodgson shouted, still aiming the box at the tyrannosaurs. “Get the other egg!”

Baselton turned to look at the adult tyrannosaurs, seeing their agitation and their anger, watching their jaws snap open and closed, and he had the sudden feeling that sound or no sound, these animals would not allow anyone to enter the nest again. King had been lucky but Baselton would not be lucky, he could feel it, and—

“George! Now!”

Baselton said, “I can’t!”

“You dumb fuck!” Holding the gun high, Dodgson began to climb down into the nest himself. But as he started, he twisted his body—and the battery plug pulled out of the box.

The sound abruptly died.

In the clearing, there was silence.

Baselton moaned.

The tyrannosaurs shook their heads a final time, and roared.

Baselton saw Dodgson go rigidly still, his body frozen. Baselton also stood still. Somehow, he forced his body to stay where he was. He forced his knees to stop trembling. He held his breath.

And he waited.

On the far side of the clearing, the tyrannosaurs began to move toward him.

“What are they doing?” Arby cried, in the trailer. He was so close to the monitor his nose almost touched the screen. “Are they crazy? They’re just standing there.”

Beside him, Kelly said nothing. She watched the screen silently.

“Want to be out there now, Kel?” Arby said.

“Shut up,” Kelly said.

“No, they’re not crazy,” Malcolm said over the radio, as he stared at the dashboard monitor. The Explorer lurched down the trail, heading toward the eastern sector of the island. Thorne was driving. Sarah and Malcolm were in the back seat.

Sarah said, “He should be trying to put his sound machine together again. Are they really just going to stand there?”

“Yes,” Malcolm said.

“Why?”

“They are misinformed,” Malcolm said.

Dodgson

Dodgson watched the lead tyrannosaur come toward him. For such big animals, they were cautious. Only one of the two parents approached them, and although it paused to roar fiercely every few paces, it seemed oddly tentative, as if it was perplexed by the fact that the men were staying there. Or perhaps it could not see them. Perhaps he and Baselton had vanished from their view.

The other parent hung back, remaining toward the other side of the nest. Bobbing and ducking its head, agitated.

Agitated but not attacking.

Of course, the roars of the approaching dinosaur were terrifying, blood-chilling. Dodgson didn’t dare glance at Baselton, just a few yards away. Baselton was probably peeing in his pants right now. Just so he didn’t turn and run, Dodgson thought. If he ran, he was a dead man. If he stayed perfectly still, everything would be all right.

Standing stiffly, keeping his body rigid, Dodgson held the anodized box at waist level in his left hand, near his belt buckle. With his right hand, he slowly, ever so slowly, pulled up the disconnected power cord. In a few moments he would feel the end plug in his hands, and then he would slip it back into the box.

Meanwhile, he never took his eyes off the approaching tyrannosaur. He felt the ground shake beneath his feet. He heard the cries of the infant that King had stepped on. Those cries seemed to bother the parents, to arouse them.

No matter. Just a few seconds more, and he would have the plug back in the power pack. And then …

The tyrannosaur was very close now. Dodgson could smell the rotten odor of the carnivore. The animal roared, and he felt hot breath. It was standing right by Baselton. Dodgson turned his head fractionally, to watch.

Baselton stood entirely still. The tyrannosaur came close, and lowered his big head. He snorted at Baselton. He raised his head again, as if perplexed.

He really can’t see him, Dodgson thought.

The tyrannosaur bellowed, a ferocious sound. Somehow Baselton stayed unmoving. The tyrannosaur bent over, bringing his huge head down again. The jaws opened and closed. Baselton stared straight forward, not blinking. With huge flaring nostrils, the tyrannosaur smelled him, a long snuffling inhalation that fluttered Baselton’s trouser legs.

Then the tyrannosaur nudged Baselton tentatively with his snout. And in that moment Dodgson realized that the animal could see him after all, and then the tyrannosaur swung his head laterally, striking Baselton in the side and easily knocking him to the earth. Baselton yelled as the tyrannosaur’s big foot came down, pinning him to the ground. Baselton raised his arms and shouted “You son of a bitch!” just as the head came down, jaws wide, and closed on him. The movement was gentle, almost delicate, but in the next instant the head snapped high, tearing the body, and Dodgson heard a scream and saw something small and floppy hanging from the jaws, and realized it was Baselton’s arm. Baselton’s hand swung freely, the metal band of his wristwatch glinting beneath the tyrannosaur’s huge eye.

Baselton was screaming, a continuous undifferentiated sound, and hearing it, Dodgson broke into a dizzying sweat. Then he turned and ran, back toward the car, back toward safety, back toward anything.

He ran.

Kelly and Arby turned away from the monitor at the same moment. Kelly felt sick. She couldn’t watch. But through the radio they could still hear the tinny screams of the man lying on his back, while the tyrannosaur tore him apart.

“Turn it off,” Kelly said.

A moment later, the sound stopped.

Kelly sighed, let her shoulders drop. “Thank you,” she said.

“I didn’t do anything,” Arby said.

She glanced back at the screen, and quickly looked away again. The tyrannosaur was tearing at something red. She shivered.

It was silent in the trailer. Kelly heard the tick of electronic counters, and the thumping of the water pumps under the floor. Outside, there was the faint sound of wind rustling the tall grass. Kelly suddenly felt very alone, very isolated on this island.

“Arby,” she said, “what are we going to do?”

Arby didn’t answer her.

He bolted for the bathroom.

“I knew it,” Malcolm said, staring at the dashboard monitor. “I knew that would happen. They tried to steal eggs. Now look—the tyrannosaurs are leaving! Both of them!” He pushed the radio transmitter. “Arby. Kelly. Are you there?”

“We can’t talk,” Kelly said.

The Explorer continued down the hillside, toward the area of the tyrannosaur nest. Thorne gripped the wheel grimly as he drove. “What a damn mess.”

“Kelly. Are you listening? We can’t see what’s happening down there. The tyrannosaurs have left the nest! Kelly? What’s happening?”

Dodgson sprinted for the Jeep. The battery pack fell off his belt as he ran, but he didn’t care. Up ahead in the Jeep, he saw King waiting, tense and pale.

Dodgson got behind the wheel, started the engine. The tyrannosaurs roared.

“Where’s Baselton?” King asked.

“Didn’t make it,” Dodgson said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he fucking didn’t make it!” Dodgson yelled, and slammed the car into gear. The Jeep took off, bouncing up the hill. They heard the tyrannosaurs bellowing behind them.

King was holding the egg, looking back down the road. “Maybe we should get rid of this,” he said.

“Don’t you fucking dare!” Dodgson said.

King was rolling down the window. “Maybe he just wants the egg back.”

“No,” Dodgson said. “No!” He reached across the passenger seat, struggling with King as he drove. The trail was narrow, with deep ruts. The Jeep lurched forward.

Suddenly, one of the tyrannosaurs burst from the trees in the road ahead. The animal stood there, snarling, blocking the road.

“Oh Christ,” Dodgson said, slamming on the brakes. The car slid sickeningly in the muddy track, came to a stop.

The tyrannosaur lumbered toward them, bellowing.

“Turn around!” King screamed. “Turn around!”

But Dodgson didn’t turn around. He slammed the car into reverse, and started backing down the trail. He was driving fast, and the road was narrow.

“You’re crazy!” King said. “You’re going to kill us!”

Dodgson swung his arm, smacked King with his hand. “Shut the fuck up!” he shouted. It took all his attention to maneuver the car back down the winding trail. Even going as fast as he could, he was sure the tyrannosaur would be faster. It wasn’t going to work. They were in a fucking Jeep with a fucking cloth top, and they were going to get killed and—

“No!” King shouted.

Behind them, Dodgson saw the second tyrannosaur, charging up the road toward them. He looked forward, saw the first tyrannosaur bearing down on them. They were trapped.

He twisted the wheel in panic and the car ran off the road, crashing backward into dense underbrush and surrounding trees, and he felt a jolting impact. Then the rear of the car dropped sickeningly, and he realized the back wheels were hanging over the edge of a hill. He gunned the engine frantically, but the wheels just spun in the air. It was hopeless. And slowly, the car sank backward, deeper into foliage so dense he could not see through it. But they were over the edge. Beside him, King was sobbing. He heard the tyrannosaurs roaring, very near now.

Dodgson flung open the car door, and jumped out into space. He plunged through the foliage, fell, hit a tree trunk, and tumbled down a steep jungle hill. Somewhere along the way he felt a sharp pain in his forehead, and saw stars for the brief moment before blackness enveloped him, and he lost consciousness.

Decision

They sat in the Explorer, on top of the ridge overlooking the jungle-covered east valley. The windows were down. They listened to the bellowing of the tyrannosaurs, as the huge animals crashed through the underbrush.

“They both left the nest,” Thorne said.

“Yeah. Those guys must have taken something.” Malcolm sighed.

They were silent a while, listening.

They heard a soft buzzing, and then Eddie pulled up alongside them, in the motorcycle. “I thought you might need help. Are you going to go down?”

Malcolm shook his head. “No, absolutely not. It’s too dangerous—we don’t know where they are.”

Sarah Harding said, “Why did Dodgson just stand there like that? That’s not the way to act around predators. You get caught around lions, you make a lot of noise, wave your hands, throw things at them. Try to scare them off. You don’t just stand there.”

“He probably read the wrong research paper,” Malcolm said, shaking his head. “There’s been a theory going around that tyrannosaurs can only see movement. A guy named Roxton made casts of rex braincases, and concluded that tyrannosaurs had the brain of a frog.”

The radio clicked. Levine said, “Roxton is an idiot. He doesn’t know enough anatomy to have sex with his wife. His paper was a joke.”

“What paper?” Thorne said.

The radio clicked again. “Roxton,” Levine said, “believed that tyrannosaurs had a visual system like an amphibian: like a frog. A frog sees motion but doesn’t see stillness. But it is quite impossible that a predator such as a tyrannosaur would have a visual system that worked that way. Quite impossible. Because the most common defense of prey animals is to freeze. A deer or something like that, it senses danger, and it freezes. A predator has to be able to see them anyway. And of course a tyrannosaur could.”

Over the radio, Levine snorted with disgust. “It’s just like the other idiotic theory put forth by Grant a few years back that a tyrannosaur could be confused by a driving rainstorm, because it was not adapted to wet climates. That’s equally absurd. The Cretaceous wasn’t particularly dry. And in any case, tyrannosaurs are North American animals—they’ve only been found in the U.S. or Canada. Tyrannosaurus rex lived on the shores of the great inland sea, east of the Rocky Mountains. There are lots of thunderstorms on mountain slopes. I’m quite sure tyrannosaurs saw plenty of rain, and they evolved to deal with it.”

“So is there any reason why a tyrannosaur might not attack somebody?” Malcolm said.

“Yes, of course. The most obvious one,” Levine said.

“Which is?”

“If it wasn’t hungry. If it had just eaten another animal. Anything larger than a goat would take care of its hunger for hours to come. No, no. The tyrannosaur sees fine, moving or still.”

They listened to the roaring, coming up from the valley below. They saw thrashing in the underbrush, about half a mile away, to the north. More bellowing. The two rexes seemed to be answering each other.

Sarah Harding said, “What are we carrying?”

Thorne said, “Three Lindstradts. Fully loaded.”

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

The radio crackled. “I’m not there,” Levine said, over the radio. “But I’d certainly advise waiting.”

“The hell with waiting,” Malcolm said. “Sarah’s right. Let’s go down there and see how bad it is.”

“Your funeral,” Levine said.

Arby came back to the monitor, wiping his chin. He still looked a little green. “What are they doing now?”

“Dr. Malcolm and the others are going to the nest.”

“Are you kidding?” he said, alarmed.

“Don’t worry,” Kelly said. “Sarah can handle it.”

“You hope,” Arby said.

Nest

Just beyond the clearing, they parked the Explorer. Eddie pulled up in the motorcycle, and leaned it against the trunk of a tree and waited while the others climbed out of the Explorer.

Sarah Harding smelled the familiar sour odor of rotting flesh and excrement that always marked a carnivore nesting site. In the afternoon heat, it was faintly nauseating. Flies buzzed in the still air. Harding took one of the rifles, slung it over her shoulder. She looked at the three men. They were all standing very still, tense, not moving. Malcolm’s face was pale, particularly around the lips. It reminded her of the time that Coffmann, her old professor, had visited her in Africa. Coffmann was one of those hard-drinking Hemingway types, with lots of affairs at home, and lots of tales of his adventures with the orangs in Sumatra, the ring-tailed lemurs in Madagascar. So she took him with her to a kill site in the savannah. And he promptly passed out. He weighed more than two hundred pounds, and she had to drag him out by the collar while the lions circled and snarled at her. It had been a good lesson for her.

Now she leaned close to the three men and whispered, “If you’ve got any qualms about this, don’t go. Just wait here. I don’t want to worry about you. I can do this myself.” She started off.

“Are you sure—”

“Yes. Now keep quiet.” She moved directly toward the clearing. Malcolm and the others hurried to catch up with her. She pushed aside the palm fronds, and stepped out into the open. The tyrannosaurs were gone, and the mud cone was deserted. Over to the right, she saw a shoe, with a bit of torn flesh sticking out above the ragged sock. That was all there was left of Baselton.

From within the nest, she heard a plaintive, high-pitched squeal. Harding climbed up the mud bank, with Malcolm struggling to follow. She saw two infant tyrannosaurs there, mewling. Nearby were three large eggs. They saw heavy footprints all around, in the mud.

“They took one of the eggs,” Malcolm said. “Damn.”

“You didn’t want anything to disrupt your little ecosystem?”

Malcolm smiled crookedly. “Yeah. I was hoping.”

“Too bad,” she said, and moved quickly around the edge of the pit. She bent over, looking at the baby tyrannosaurs. One of the babies was cowering, its downy neck pulled into its body. But the second one behaved very differently. It did not move as they approached, but remained lying sprawled on its side, breathing shallowly, eyes glazed.

“This one’s been hurt,” she said.

Levine was standing in the high hide. He pressed the headset to his ear, and spoke into the microphone near his cheek. “I need a description,” he said.

Thorne said, “There’s two of them, roughly two feet long, weighing maybe forty pounds. About the size of small cassowary birds. Large eyes. Short snouts. Pale-brown color. And there’s a ring of down around the necks.”

“Can they stand?”

“Uh … if they can, not very well. They’re kind of flopping around. Squeaking a lot.”

“Then they’re infants,” Levine said, nodding. “Probably only a few days old. Never been out of the nest. I’d be very careful.”

“Why is that?”

“With offspring that young,” Levine said, “the parents won’t leave them for long.”

Harding moved closer to the injured infant. Still mewling, the baby tried to crawl toward her, dragging its body awkwardly. One leg was bent at an odd angle. “I think the left leg’s hurt.”

Eddie came closer, standing alongside her to see. “Is it broken?”

“Yeah, probably, but—”

“Hey!” Eddie said. The baby lunged forward, and clamped its jaws around the ankle of his boot. He pulled his foot away, dragging the baby, which held its grip tightly. “Hey! Let go!”

Eddie lifted his leg up, shook it back and forth, but the baby refused to let go. He pulled for a moment longer, then stopped. Now the baby just lay there on the ground, breathing shallowly, jaws still locked around Eddie’s boot. “Jeez,” Eddie said.

“Aggressive little guy, isn’t he,” Sarah said. “Right from birth …”

Eddie looked down at the tiny, razor-sharp jaws. They hadn’t penetrated the leather. The baby held on firmly. With the butt of his rifle, he poked the infant’s head a couple of times. It had no effect at all. The baby lay on the ground, breathing shallowly. Its big eyes blinked slowly as they stared up at Eddie, but it did not release its grip.

They heard the distant roars of the parents, somewhere to the north. “Let’s get out of here,” Malcolm said. “We’ve seen what we came here to see. We’ve got to find where Dodgson went.”

Thorne said, “I think I saw a track up the trail. They might have gone off there.”

“We better have a look.”

They all started back to the car.

“Wait a minute,” Eddie said, looking down at his foot. “What am I going to do about the baby?”

“Shoot it,” Malcolm said, over his shoulder.

“You mean kill it?”

Sarah said, “It’s got a broken leg, Eddie, it’s going to die anyway.”

“Yeah, but—”

Thorne called, “We’re going back up the trail, Eddie, and if we don’t find Dodgson, we’ll take the ridge road going toward the laboratory. Then down to the trailer again.”

“Okay, Doc. I’m right behind you.” Eddie lifted his rifle, turned it in his hands.

“Do it now,” Sarah said, climbing into the Explorer. “Because you don’t want to be here when Momma and Poppa get back.”

Gambler’s Ruin

Driving up the trail, Malcolm stared at the dashboard monitor, as the image flicked from one camera view to another. He was looking for Dodgson and the rest of his party.

Over the radio, Levine said, “How bad was it?”

“They took one egg,” Malcolm said. “And we had to shoot one of the babies.”

“So, a loss of two. Out of a total hatching brood of what, six?”

“That’s right.”

“Frankly, I’d say it’s a minor matter,” Levine said. “As long as you stop those people from doing anything more.”

“We’re looking for them now,” Malcolm said morosely.

Harding said, “It was bound to happen, Ian. You know you can’t expect to observe the animals without changing anything. It’s a scientific impossibility.”

“Of course it is,” Malcolm said. “That’s the greatest single scientific discovery of the twentieth century. You can’t study anything without changing it.”

Since Galileo, scientists had adopted the view that they were objective observers of the natural world. That was implicit in every aspect of their behavior, even the way they wrote scientific papers, saying things like “It was observed …” As if nobody had observed it. For three hundred years, that impersonal quality was the hallmark of science. Science was objective, and the observer had no influence on the results he or she described.

This objectivity made science different from the humanities, or from religion—fields where the observer’s point of view was integral, where the observer was inextricably mixed up in the results observed.

But in the twentieth century, that difference had vanished. Scientific objectivity was gone, even at the most fundamental levels. Physicists now knew you couldn’t even measure a single subatomic particle without affecting it totally. If you stuck your instruments in to measure a particle’s position, you changed its velocity. If you measured its velocity, you changed its position. That basic truth became the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: that whatever you studied you also changed. In the end, it became clear that all scientists were participants in a participatory universe which did not allow anyone to be a mere observer.

“I know objectivity is impossible,” Malcolm said impatiently. “I’m not concerned about that.”

“Then what are you concerned about?”

“I’m concerned about the Gambler’s Ruin,” Malcolm said, staring at the monitor.

Gambler’s Ruin was a notorious and much-debated statistical phenomenon that had major consequences both for evolution, and for everyday life. “Let’s say you’re a gambler,” he said. “And you’re playing a coin-toss game. Every time the coin comes up heads, you win a dollar. Every time it comes up tails, you lose a dollar.”

“Okay …”

“What happens over time?”

Harding shrugged. “The chances of getting either heads or tails is even. So maybe you win, maybe you lose. But in the end, you’ll come out at zero.”

“Unfortunately, you don’t,” Malcolm said. “If you gamble long enough, you’ll always lose—the gambler is always ruined. That’s why casinos stay in business. But the question is, what happens over time? What happens in the period before the gambler is finally ruined?”

“Okay,” she said. “What happens?”

“If you chart the gambler’s fortunes over time, what you find is the gambler wins for a period, or loses for a period. In other words, everything in the world goes in streaks. It’s a real phenomenon, and you see it everywhere: in weather, in river flooding, in baseball, in heart rhythms, in stock markets. Once things go bad, they tend to stay bad. Like the old folk saying that bad things come in threes. Complexity theory tells us the folk wisdom is right. Bad things cluster. Things go to hell together. That’s the real world.”

“So what are you saying? That things are going to hell now?”

“They could be, thanks to Dodgson,” Malcolm said, frowning at the monitor. “What happened to those bastards, anyway?”

King

There was a buzzing, like the sound of a distant bee. Howard King was dimly aware of it, as he came slowly back to consciousness. He opened his eyes, and saw the windshield of a car, and the branches of trees beyond.

The buzzing was louder.

King didn’t know where he was. He couldn’t remember how he got here, what had happened. He felt pain in his shoulders, and at his hips. His forehead throbbed. He tried to remember but the pain distracted him, prevented him from thinking clearly. The last thing he remembered was the tyrannosaur in front of him on the road. That was the last thing. Then Dodgson had looked back and—

King turned his head, and cried out as sudden, sharp pain ran up his neck to his skull. The pain made him gasp, took his breath away. He closed his eyes, wincing. Then he slowly opened them again.

Dodgson was not in the car. The driver’s door hung wide open, a dappled shadow across the door panel. The keys were still in the ignition.

Dodgson was gone.

There was a streak of blood across the top of the steering wheel. The black box was on the floor by the gearshift. The open driver’s door creaked a little, moved a little.

In the distance, King heard the buzzing again, like a giant bee. It was a mechanical sound, he now realized. Something mechanical.

It made him think of the boat. How long would the boat wait at the river? What time was it, anyway? He looked at his watch. The crystal was smashed, the hands fixed at 1:54.

He heard the buzzing again. It was coming closer.

With an effort, King pushed himself away from the seat, toward the dashboard. Streaks of electric pain shot up his spine, but quickly subsided. He took a deep breath.

I’m all right, he thought. At least, I’m still here.

King looked at the open driver’s door, in the sunlight. The sun was still high. It must still be sometime in the afternoon. When was the boat leaving? Four o’clock? Five o’clock? He couldn’t remember any more. But he was certain that those Spanish fishermen wouldn’t hang around once it started to get dark. They’d leave the island.

And Howard King wanted to be on the boat when they did. It was the only thing he wanted in the world. Wincing, he raised himself up, and painfully slid over to the driver’s seat. He settled himself in, took a deep breath, and then leaned over, and looked out the open door.

The car was hanging over empty space, supported by trees. He saw a steep jungle hillside, falling away beneath him. It was dark beneath the canopy of trees. He felt dizzy, just looking down. The ground must be twenty or thirty feet below him. He saw scattered green ferns, and a few dark boulders. He twisted his body to look more.

And then he saw him.

Dodgson lay on his back, head downward, on the slope of the hill. His body was crumpled, arms and legs thrown out in awkward positions. He was not moving. King couldn’t see him very well, in the dense foliage on the hillside, but Dodgson looked dead.

The buzzing was suddenly very loud, building rapidly, and King looked forward and saw, through the foliage that blocked the windshield, a car driving by, not ten yards away. A car!

And then the car was gone. From the sound of it, he thought, it was an electric car. So it must be Malcolm.

Howard King was somehow encouraged by the thought that other people were on this island. He felt new strength, despite the pain in his body. He reached forward, and turned the key in the ignition. The engine rumbled.

He put the car in gear, and gently stepped on the accelerator.

The rear wheels spun. He engaged the front-wheel drive. At once, the Jeep rumbled forward, lurching through the branches. A moment later, he was out on the road.

He remembered this road now. To the right, it led down to the tyrannosaurus nest. Malcolm’s car had gone to the left.

King turned left, and headed up the road. He was trying to remember how to get back to the river, back to the boat. He vaguely recalled that there was a Y-fork in the road at the top of the hill. He would take that fork, he decided, drive down the hill, and get the hell off this island.

That was his only goal.

To get off this island, before it was too late.

Bad News

The Explorer came to the top of the hill, and Thorne drove onto the ridge road. The road curved back and forth, cut into the rock face of the cliff. In many places, the dropoff was precipitous, but they had views over the entire island. Eventually they came to a place where they could look over the valley. They could see the high hide off to the left, and closer by, the clearing with the two trailers. Off to the right was the laboratory complex, and the worker complex beyond.

“I don’t see Dodgson anywhere,” Malcolm said unhappily. “Where could he have gone?”

Thorne pushed the radio button. “Arby?”

“Yes, Doc.”

“Do you see them?”

“No, but …” He hesitated.

“What?”

“Don’t you want to come back here now? It’s pretty amazing.”

“What is?” Thorne said.

“Eddie,” Arby said. “He just got back. And he brought the baby with him.”

Malcolm leaned forward. “He did what?”

FIFTH CONFIGURATION

“At the edge of chaos, unexpected outcomes occur. The risk to survival is severe.”

IAN MALCOLM

Baby

In the trailer, they were clustered around the table where the baby Tyrannosaurus rex now lay unconscious on a stainless-steel pan, his large eyes closed, his snout pushed into the clear plastic oval of an oxygen mask. The mask almost fitted the baby’s blunt snout. The oxygen hissed softly.

“I couldn’t just leave him,” Eddie said. “And I figured we can fix his leg.…”

“But Eddie,” Malcolm said, shaking his head.

“So I shot him full of morphine from the first-aid kit, and brought him back. You see? The oxygen mask almost fits him.”

“Eddie,” Malcolm said, “this was the wrong thing to do.”

“Why? He’s okay. We just fix him and take him back.”

“But you’re interfering with the system,” Malcolm said.

The radio clicked. “This is extremely unwise,” Levine said, over the radio. “Extremely.”

“Thank you, Richard,” Thorne said.

“I am entirely opposed to bringing any animal back to the trailer.”

“Too late to worry about that now,” Sarah Harding said. She had moved forward alongside the baby, and began strapping cardiac leads to the animal’s chest; they heard the thump of the heartbeat. It was very fast, over a hundred and fifty beats a minute. “How much morphine did you give him?”

“Gee,” Eddie said. “I just … you know. The whole syringe.”

“What is that? Ten cc’s?”

“I think. Maybe twenty.”

Malcolm looked at Harding. “How long before it wears off?”

“I have no idea,” she said. “I’ve sedated lions and jackals in the field, when I tagged them. With those animals, there’s a rough correlation between dose and body weight. But with young animals, it’s unpredictable. Maybe a few minutes, maybe a few hours. And I don’t know a thing about baby tyrannosaurs. Basically, it’s a function of metabolism, and this one seems to be rapid, bird-like. The heart’s pumping very fast. All I can say is, let’s get him out of here as quickly as possible.”

Harding picked up the small ultrasound transducer and held it to the baby’s leg. She looked over her shoulder at the monitor. Kelly and Arby were blocking the view. “Please, give us a little room here,” she said, and they moved away. “We don’t have much time. Please.”

As they moved away, Sarah saw the green-and-white outlines of the leg and its bones. Surprisingly like a large bird, she thought. A vulture or a stork. She moved the transducer. “Okay … there’s the metatarsals … and there’s the tibia and fibula, the two bones of the lower leg.…”

Arby said, “Why are the bones different shades like that?” The legs had some dense white sections within paler-green outlines.

“Because it’s an infant,” Harding said. “His legs are still mostly cartilage, with very little calcified bone. I’d guess this baby probably can’t walk yet—at least, not very well. There. Look at the patella.… You can see the blood supply to the joint capsule.…”

“How come you know all this anatomy?” Kelly said.

“I have to. I spend a lot of time looking through the scat of predators,” she said. “Examining pieces of bones that are left behind, and figuring out which animals have been eaten. To do that, you have to know comparative anatomy very well.” She moved the transducer along the baby’s leg. “And my father was a vet.”

Malcolm looked up sharply. “Your father was a vet?”

“Yes. At the San Diego Zoo. He was a bird specialist. But I don’t see … Can you magnify this?”

Arby flicked a switch. The image doubled in size.

“Ah. Okay. All right. There it is. You see it?”

“No.”

“It’s mid-fibula. See it? A thin black line. That’s a fracture, just above the epiphysis.”

“That little black line there?” Arby said.

“That little black line means death for this infant,” Sarah said. “The fibula won’t heal straight, so the ankle joint can’t pivot when he stands on his hind feet. The baby won’t be able to run, and probably can’t even walk. It’ll be crippled, and a predator will pick it off before it gets more than a few weeks old.”

Eddie said, “But we can set it.”

“Okay,” Sarah said. “What were you going to use for a cast?”

“Diesterase,” Eddie said. “I brought a kilo of it, in hundred-cc tubes. I packed lots, for glue. The stuff’s polymer resin, it solidifies hard as steel.”

“Great,” Harding said, “That’ll kill him, too.”

“It will?”

“He’s growing, Eddie. In a few weeks he’ll be much larger. We need something that’s rigid, but biodegradable,” she said. “Something that will wear off, or break off, in three to five weeks, when his leg’s healed. What have you got?”

Eddie frowned. “I don’t know.”

“Well, we haven’t got much time,” Harding said.

Eddie said, “Doc? This is like one of your famous test questions. How to make a dinosaur cast with only Q-tips and super-glue.”

“I know,” Thorne said. The irony of the situation was not lost on him. He had given problems such as these to his engineering students for three decades. Now he was faced with one himself.

Eddie said, “Maybe we could degrade the resin—mix it with something like table sugar.”

Thorne shook his head. “Hydroxy groups in the sucrose will make the resin friable. It’ll harden okay, but it’ll shatter like glass as soon as the animal moves.”

“What if we mix it with cloth that’s been soaked in sugar?”

“You mean, to get bacteria to decay the cloth?”

“Yeah.”

“And then the cast breaks?”

“Yeah.”

Thorne shrugged. “That might work,” he said. “But without testing, we can’t know how long the cast will last. Might be a few days, it might be a few months.”

“That’s too long,” Sarah said. “This animal is growing rapidly. If growth is constricted, it’ll end up being crippled by the cast.”

“What we need,” Eddie said, “is an organic resin that will form a decaying binder. Like a gum of some kind.”

“Chewing gum?” Arby said. “Because I have plenty of—”

“No, I was thinking of a different kind of gum. Chemically speaking, the diesterase resin—”

“We’ll never solve it chemically,” Thorne said. “We don’t have the supplies.”

“What else can we do? There’s no choice but—”

“What if you make something that’s different in different directions?” Arby said. “Strong one way and weak in another?”

“You can’t,” Eddie said. “It’s a homogeneous resin. It’s all the same stuff, goopy glue that turns rock-hard when it dries, and—”

“No, wait a minute,” Thorne said, turning to the boy. “What do you mean, Arby?”

“Well,” Arby said, “Sarah said the leg is growing. That means it’s going to grow longer, which doesn’t matter for a cast, and wider, which does, because it’ll start to squeeze the leg. But if you made it weak in the diameter—”

“He’s right,” Thorne said. “We can solve it structurally.”

“How?” Eddie said.

“Just build in a split-line. Maybe using aluminum foil. We have some for cooking.”

“That’d be much too weak,” Eddie said.

“Not if we coat it with a layer of resin.” Thorne turned to Sarah. “What we can do is make a cast that is very strong for vertical stresses, but weak for lateral stresses. It’s a simple engineering problem. The baby can walk around on its cuff, and everything is fine, as long as the stresses are vertical. But when its leg grows, it will pop the split-line open, and the cuff will fall away.”

“Yes,” Arby said, nodding.

“Is that hard to do?” she said.

“No. It should be pretty easy. You just build a cuff of aluminum foil, and coat it with resin.”

Eddie said, “And what’ll hold the cuff together while you coat it?”

“How about chewing gum?” Arby said.

“You got it,” Thorne said, smiling.

At that moment, the baby rex stirred, its legs twitching. It raised its head, the oxygen mask dropping away, and gave a low, weak squeak.

“Quickly,” Sarah said, grabbing the head. “More morphine.”

Malcolm had a syringe ready. He jabbed it into the animal’s neck.

“Just five cc’s now,” Sarah said.

“What’s wrong with more? Keep him out longer?”

“He’s in shock from the injury, Ian. You can kill him with too much morphine. You’ll put him into respiratory arrest. His adrenal glands are probably stressed, too.”

“If he even has adrenals,” Malcolm said. “Does a Tyrannosaurus rex have hormones at all? The truth is, we don’t know anything about these animals.”

The radio clicked, and Levine said, “Speak for yourself, Ian. In point of fact, I suspect we will find that dinosaurs have hormones. There are compelling reasons to imagine they do. As long as you have gone to the misguided trouble of taking the baby, you might draw some tubes of blood. Meanwhile, Doc, could you pick up the phone?”

Malcolm sighed. “That guy,” he said, “is starting to get on my nerves.”

Thorne moved down the trailer to the communications module near the front. Levine’s request was odd; there was a perfectly good system of microphones throughout the trailer. But Levine knew that; he had designed the system himself.

Thorne picked up the phone. “Yes?”

“Doc,” Levine said, “I’ll get right to the point. Bringing the baby to the trailer was a mistake. It’s asking for trouble.”

“What sort of trouble?”

“We don’t know, is the point. And I don’t want to alarm anybody. But why don’t you bring the kids out to the high hide for a while? And why don’t you and Eddie come, too?”

“You’re telling me to get the hell out of here. You really think it’s necessary?”

“In a word,” Levine said, “yes. I do.”

As the morphine was injected into the baby, he gave a sighing wheeze, and collapsed back onto the steel pan. Sarah adjusted the oxygen mask around his face. She glanced back at the monitor, checking the heart rate, but once again Arby and Kelly were blocking her view. “Kids, please.”

Thorne stepped forward, clapped his hands. “Okay, kids! Field trip! Let’s get moving.”

Arby said, “Now? But we want to watch the baby—”

“No, no,” Thorne said. “Dr. Malcolm and Dr. Harding need room to work. This is the time for a field trip to the high hide. We can watch the dinosaurs for the rest of the afternoon.”

“But Doc—”

“Don’t argue. We’re just in the way here, and we’re going,” Thorne said. “Eddie, you come, too. Leave these two lovebirds to do their work.”

In a few moments, they left. The trailer door slammed shut behind them. Sarah Harding heard the soft whirr of the Explorer as it drove away. Bent over the baby, adjusting the oxygen mask, she said, “Lovebirds?”

Malcolm shrugged. “Levine …”

“Was this Levine’s idea? Clearing everybody out?”

“Probably.”

“Does he know something we don’t?”

Malcolm laughed. “I’m sure he thinks he does.”

“Well, let’s start the cast,” she said. “I want to get it done quickly, and take this baby home again.”

The High Hide

The sun had disappeared behind low-hanging clouds by the time they reached the high hide. The entire valley was bathed in a soft reddish glow as Eddie parked the Explorer beneath the aluminum scaffolding, and they all climbed up to the little shelter above. Levine was there, binoculars to his eyes. He did not seem glad to see them. “Stop moving around so much,” he said irritably.

From the shelter, they had a magnificent view over the valley. Somewhere in the north, thunder rumbled. The air was cooling, and felt electric.

“Is there going to be a storm?” Kelly asked.

“Looks like it,” Thorne said.

Arby glanced doubtfully at the metal roof of the shelter. “How long are we staying out here?”

“For a while,” Thorne said. “This is our only day here. The helicopters are taking us away tomorrow morning. I thought you kids deserved a chance to see the dinosaurs in the field one more time.”

Arby squinted at him. “What’s the real reason?”

“I know,” Kelly said, in a worldly tone.

“Yeah? What?”

“Dr. Malcolm wants to be alone with Sarah, stupid.”

“Why?”

“They’re old friends,” Kelly said.

“So? We were just going to watch.”

“No,” Kelly said. “I mean, they’re old friends.”

“I know what you’re talking about,” Arby said. “I’m not stupid, you know.”

“Knock it off,” Levine said, staring through the binoculars. “You’re missing the interesting stuff.”

“What’s that?”

“Those triceratops, down at the river. Something’s bothering them.”

The triceratops herd had been drinking peacefully from the river, but now they were beginning to make noise. For such huge animals, their vocalizations were incongruously high-pitched: they sounded more like yelping dogs.

Arby turned to look. “There’s something in the trees,” he said, “across the river.” There was some hint of dark movement, beneath the trees.

The triceratops herd shifted, and began backing toward each other until they formed a sort of rosette, with their curved horns facing outward, against the unseen menace. The solitary baby was in the center, yelping in fear. One of the animals, presumably its mother, turned and nuzzled it. Afterward, the baby was silent.

“I see them,” Kelly said, staring at the trees. “They’re raptors. Over there.”

The triceratops herd faced the raptors, the adults barking as they swung their sharp horns up and down. They created a kind of barrier of moving spikes. There was an unmistakable sense of coordination, of group defense against predators.

Levine was smiling happily. “There’s never been any evidence for this,” he said, suddenly cheerful. “In fact, most paleontologists don’t believe it happens.”

“Don’t believe what happens?” Arby said.

“This kind of group defensive behavior. Especially with trikes—they look a bit like rhinos, so they’ve been assumed to be solitary, like rhinos. But now we will see.… Ah. Yes.”

From beneath the trees, a single velociraptor hopped out into view. It moved quickly on its hind legs, balancing with a stiff tail.

The triceratops herd barked noisily at the appearance of the raptor. The other raptors remained hidden beneath the trees. The solitary velociraptor in full view moved in a slow semicircle around the herd, entering the water on the far side. It crossed, swimming easily, and came out on the other bank. It was now about fifty yards upstream from the barking triceratops herd, which wheeled to present a united front. All their attention was focused on the single velociraptor.

Slowly, other raptors began to slink out of their hiding place. They moved low, bodies hidden in the tall grass.

“Jeez,” Arby said. “They’re hunting.”

“In a pack,” Levine said, nodding. He picked up a bit of candy bar wrapper from the floor of the shelter, and dropped it, watching it flutter off in the wind. “The main pack is downwind, so the trikes can’t smell them.” He raised the binoculars to his eyes again. “I think,” he said, “that we’re about to see a kill.”

They watched as the raptors closed in around the herd. And then suddenly, lightning cracked on the island rim, brilliantly lighting the valley floor. One of the stalking raptors stood up in surprise. Its head was briefly visible above the grass.

Immediately, the triceratops herd wheeled again, regrouping to face the new menace. All the raptors stopped, as if to reconsider their plan.

“What happened?” Arby said. “Why are they stopping?”

“They’re in trouble.”

“Why?”

“Look at them. The main pack is still across the river. They’re too far away to mount an attack.”

“You mean they’re giving up? Already?”

“Looks like it,” Levine said.

One by one, the raptors in the grass raised their heads, making their positions known. As each new predator appeared, the triceratops barked loudly. The raptors seemed to know the situation was hopeless. They slunk away, moving back toward the trees. Seeing them retreat, the triceratops barked even louder.

And then the single raptor by the water’s edge charged. It moved incredibly fast—astonishingly fast—streaking like a cheetah across the fifty yards that separated it from the herd. The adult triceratops had no time to re-form. The baby was exposed. It squealed in fright as it saw the approaching animal.

The velociraptor leapt into the air, raising both its hind legs. Lightning cracked again, and in the brilliant light they saw the twin curved claws high in the air. At the last moment, the nearest adult turned, swiveling its big horned head with the wide bony crest, and it knocked the raptor a glancing blow, sending the animal sprawling on the muddy bank. Immediately the adult triceratops charged forward, its head high. When it reached the raptor it stopped abruptly and swung its big head down, lowering its horns toward the fallen animal. But the raptor was quick; hissing, it leapt to its feet, and the triceratops’ horns slashed harmlessly into the mud. The raptor spun sideways, and kicked the adult on the snout, drawing blood with its big curved claw. The adult bellowed, but by then two other adults were charging forward, while the others remained behind with the baby. The raptor scrambled away, back into the grass.

“Wow,” Arby said. “That was something!”

The Herd

King gave a long sigh of relief as he came to the Y-fork in the road, and drove the red Jeep left, coming onto a wide dirt road. He recognized it at once: this was the ridge road that led back to the boat. As he looked off to his left, he could see down across the east valley. The boat was still there! All right! He gave a shout and accelerated sharply, relief flooding through him. On the deck, he could see the Spanish fishermen, staring up at the sky. Despite the threatening storm, they didn’t seem to be preparing to leave. Probably they were waiting for Dodgson.

Well, he thought, that was fine. King would be there in a few minutes. After working his way through dense jungle, he could finally see exactly where he was. The ridge road was high, following the crest of one of the volcanic spines. There was almost no foliage up here, and as the road twisted and turned, he had views across the entire island. To the east, he could look down into the ravine, and the boat at the shore. To the west, he could look straight across at the laboratory, and Malcolm’s twin trailers parked near the far edge of the clearing.

They never did find out what the hell Malcolm was doing here, he thought. Not that it mattered now. King was getting off the island. That was the only thing that mattered. He could almost feel the deck beneath his feet. Maybe one of the fishermen would even have a beer. A nice cold beer, while they chugged down the river, and pulled out of this damned island. He’d toast Dodgson, is what he’d do.

Maybe, he thought, I’ll have two beers.

* * *

King came around a curve, and saw a herd of animals standing thickly in the road. They were some kind of green dinosaurs, about four feet tall, with big domed heads and a bunch of little horns. They reminded him of green water buffalo. But there were a lot of them. He braked sharply; the car swerved to a stop.

The green dinosaurs looked at his car, but they did not move. The herd just stood there in a lazy, contented way. King waited, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. When nothing happened, he honked the horn, and flashed his headlights.

The animals just stared.

They were funny-looking creatures, with that smooth bulging curve on the forehead and all those little horns around it. They just stared at him, with a stupid cow-like look. He slipped the car into gear and edged it forward slowly, expecting that he could push his way through the animals. They didn’t move aside. Finally his front bumper nudged the nearest animal, which grunted, took a couple of steps back, lowered its head, and butted the front of the car, hard, with a metallic clang!

Christ, he thought. It could puncture the radiator, if he wasn’t careful. He stopped the car again and waited, the motor idling. The animals settled down again.

Several of them lay down on the road. He couldn’t drive over them. He looked ahead toward the river and saw the boat, not more than a quarter of a mile away. He hadn’t realized it was so near. As he watched, he realized that the fishermen were very busy on the deck. They were swinging the crane back, lashing it down. They were getting ready to leave!

The hell with waiting, he thought. He opened the door, and climbed out, leaving the car in the center of the road. Immediately, the animals jumped to their feet, and the nearest one charged him. He had the door open; the animal smashed into it, slamming it shut, leaving a deep dent in the metal. King scrambled toward the edge of the hill, only to find he was at the top of a steep vertical descent of more than a hundred feet. He’d never make it down, at least not here. Farther along, the slope was not so steep. But now more animals were charging him. He had no choice. He ran around the back of the car, just as another animal smashed into the rear taillight, shattering the plastic.

A third animal charged the back of the car directly. King scrambled up onto the spare tire, as the animal slammed into the bumper. The jolt knocked him off, and he fell to the ground, rolling, while the buffaloes snorted all around him. He got to his feet and ran to the opposite side of the road, where there was a slight rise; he scrambled up it, moving into foliage. The animals did not pursue him. Not that it did him any good—now he was on the wrong side of the road!

Somehow he had to get back to the other side.

He climbed to the top of the rise and started down, swearing to himself. He decided to work his way forward a hundred yards or so, until he was beyond the butting animals, and then cross the road. If he could do that, then he could get to the boat.

Almost immediately, he was surrounded by dense jungle. He tripped, tumbled down a muddy slope, and when he got to his feet was no longer sure which way to go. He was at the bottom of a ravine, and the palm trees were ten feet tall, and very thick. He couldn’t see more than a few feet in any direction. In a moment of panic, he realized he didn’t know which way to go. He pushed forward through the wet leaves, hoping to get his bearings back.

The kids were still peering over the railing, looking at the departing raptors. Thorne pulled Levine to one side, and said quietly, “Why did you want us to come here?”

“Just a precaution,” Levine said. “Bringing the infant to the trailer is asking for trouble.”

“What sort of trouble?”

Levine shrugged. “We don’t know, is the point. But in general, parents don’t like it when their babies are taken away. And that baby has some very big parents.”

From the other side of the shelter Arby said, “Look! Look!”

“What is it?” Levine said.

“It’s a man.”

Gasping for breath, King emerged from the jungle and walked out onto the plain. At last he could see where he was! He paused, soaked and muddy, to get his bearings.

He was disappointed to find that he was nowhere near the boat. In fact, he still seemed to be on the wrong side of the road. He was facing a broad grassy plain, with a river coursing through it. The plain was mostly deserted, although there were several dinosaurs farther down the banks. They were the horned ones: triceratops. And they looked a little agitated. The big adults were raising their heads up and down, making barking sounds.

Obviously, he would have to follow the river, until it brought him to the boat. But he’d have to be careful getting past these triceratops. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a candy bar. He ripped the wrapping while he watched the triceratops, wishing they would go away. How long would it take him to reach the boat? That was the only question on his mind. He decided to move, triceratops or not. He began walking through the tall grass.

Then he heard a reptilian hiss. It was coming from the grass, somewhere to his left. And he noticed a smell, a peculiar rotten smell. He paused, waiting. The candy bar didn’t taste so good, any more.

Then, behind him, he heard splashing. It was coming from the river.

King turned to look.

“It’s one of those men from the Jeep,” Arby said, standing in the high hide. “But why is he waiting?”

From their vantage point, they could see the dark shapes of the raptors, moving through the grass on the other side of the river. Now two of the raptors came forward, splashing in the water. Moving toward the man.

“Oh no,” Arby said.

King saw two dark, striped lizards moving across the river. They walked on their hind legs, with a sort of hopping motion. Their bodies were reflected in the flowing water of the river. They snapped their long jaws, and hissed menacingly at King.

He glanced upstream, and saw another lizard crossing, and another beyond that. Those other animals were already deep in the water, and had begun to swim.

Howard King backed away from the river, moving deeper into the tall grass. Then he turned, and ran. He was chest-deep in grass and running hard, gasping for breath, when suddenly another lizard head rose up in front of him, hissing and snarling. He dodged, changed direction, but suddenly the nearest lizard leapt in the air. It jumped so high its body cleared the grass; he could see the entire animal flying through the air, its two hind legs raised to pounce. He glimpsed curved, dagger-like claws.

King turned again and the lizard shrieked as it landed on the ground behind him, and tumbled away in the grass. King ran on. He was energized by pure fear. Behind him he heard the lizard snarling. He ran hard: ahead was another twenty yards of grassy clearing, and then the jungle began again. He saw trees—big trees. He could climb one and get away.

Off to the left, he saw another lizard moving diagonally across the clearing toward him. King could only see the head above the grass. The lizard seemed to be moving incredibly fast. He thought: I’m not going to make it.

But he would try.

Panting, lungs searing, he sprinted for the trees. Only ten more yards now. His arms pumped, his legs churned. His breath came in ragged gasps.

And then something heavy struck him from behind, forcing him to the ground, and he felt searing pain down his back and he knew it was the claws, they dug into the flesh of his back as he was knocked down. He hit the dirt hard, and tried to roll, but the animal on his back held on, he could not move. He was pinned down on his stomach, hearing the animal snarl behind him. The pain in his back was excruciating, dizzying.

And then he felt the animal’s hot breath on the back of his neck, and he heard the snorting breath, and his terror was extreme. Then suddenly a kind of lassitude, a deep and welcome sleepiness, took him. Everything became slow. As if in a dream, he could see all the blades of grass in the ground in front of his face. He saw them with a kind of languid intensity, and he almost did not mind the sharp pain on his neck, and he almost did not care that his neck was within the animal’s hot jaws. It seemed to be happening to someone else. He was many miles away. He had a moment of surprise when he felt the bones of his neck crunching loudly—

And then blackness.

Nothing.

“Don’t look,” Thorne said, turning Arby away from the railing in the high hide. He drew the boy toward his chest, but Arby impatiently pushed away again, to watch what was happening. Thorne reached for Kelly, but she stepped away from him, and stared out at the plain.

“Don’t look,” Thorne kept saying. “Don’t look.”

The kids watched, in silence.

Levine focused his binoculars on the kill. There were now five raptors snarling around the man’s body, tearing viciously at the carcass. As he watched, one of the raptors jerked its head up, tearing away a piece of blood-soaked shirt, the ragged edge of the collar. Another was shaking the man’s severed head in its jaws, before finally dropping it on the ground. Thunder rumbled, and lightning flashed in the distant sky. It was growing dark, and Levine was having difficulty seeing exactly what was happening. But it was clear that whatever hierarchical organization they had adopted for hunting was abandoned for a kill.

Here it was every animal for itself; the frenzied raptors hopped and ducked their heads as they tore the body to pieces; and there was plenty of nipping and fighting among themselves. One animal came up, with something brown hanging from its jaws. The animal got an odd expression on its face as it chewed. Then it turned away from the rest of the pack, and held the brown object carefully in its forearms. In the growing darkness, it took Levine a moment to recognize what it was doing: it was eating a candy bar. And it seemed to be enjoying it.

The raptor turned back, and buried its long nose in the bloody carcass again. From across the plain, other raptors were racing to join the feast, half-running, half-bounding in great forward leaps. Snarling and furious, they threw themselves into the fray.

Levine lowered his glasses, and looked at the two kids. They were staring silently and calmly at the kill.

Dodgson

Dodgson was awakened by a noisy chittering, like the sound of a hundred tiny birds. It seemed to be coming from all around him. Slowly, he realized that he was lying on his back, on damp sloping ground. He tried to move, but his body felt painful and heavy. Some sort of weight pressed down on his legs, his stomach, his arms. The weight on his chest made it difficult to breathe.

And he was sleepy, incredibly sleepy. He wanted nothing more in all the world than to go back to sleep. Dodgson started to drift off to unconsciousness, but something was pulling at his hand. Tugging at his fingers, one by one. As if pulling him back to consciousness. Slowly, slowly, pulling him back.

Dodgson opened his eyes.

There was a little green dinosaur standing beside his hand. It leaned over, and bit his finger in its tiny jaws, tugging at the flesh. His fingers were bleeding; ragged chunks of flesh had already been bitten away.

He pulled his hand away in surprise, and suddenly the chittering grew louder. He turned and saw that he was surrounded by these little dinosaurs; they were standing on his chest and legs as well. They were the size of chickens and they pecked at him like chickens, quick darting bites on his stomach, his thighs, his crotch—

Revolted, Dodgson jumped to his feet, scattering the lizards, which hopped away, chirping in annoyance. The little animals moved a few feet away, then stopped. They turned back, and stared at him, showing no sign of fear. On the contrary, they seemed to be waiting.

That was when he realized what they were. They were procompsognathids. Compys.

Scavengers.

Christ, he thought. They thought I was dead.

He staggered back, almost losing his balance. He felt pain and a wave of dizziness. The little animals chittered, watched his every move.

“Go on,” he said, waving his hand. “Get out of here.”

They did not leave. They stood there, cocking their heads to one side quizzically, and waited.

He bent his head, stared down at himself. His shirt, his trousers were torn in a hundred places. Blood dribbled from a hundred tiny wounds down his clothes. He felt a wave of dizziness and put his hands on his knees. He took a deep breath, and watched his blood drip onto the leaf-strewn ground.

Christ, he thought. He took another deep breath.

When he did not move, the animals began to inch forward. He stood up, and they backed away. But a moment later, they began to come forward again.

One came close. Dodgson kicked it viciously, sending the little body flying through the air. The animal squealed in alarm, but it landed like a cat, upright and uninjured.

The others remained where they were.

Waiting.

He looked around, realized it was getting dark. He looked at his watch: 6:40. There were only a few minutes more of daylight. Beneath the jungle canopy, it was already quite dark.

He had to get to safety, and soon. He checked the compass on his watch strap, and headed south. He was pretty sure the river was to the south. He had to get back to the boat. He would be safe at the boat.

As he started walking, the compys chittered and followed after him. They stayed about five or ten feet behind, making a lot of noise as they hopped and crashed through the low foliage. There were dozens of them, he realized. As darkness descended, their eyes glowed bright green.

His body was a mass of pain. Every step hurt. His balance was not good. He was losing blood, and he was very, very sleepy. He would never make it all the way to the river. He would not make it more than another couple of hundred yards. He fell, tripping over a root. He got up slowly, dirt clinging to his blood-soaked clothes.

He looked back at the green eyes behind him, and forced himself onward. He could go a little farther, he thought. And then, directly ahead, he saw a light through the foliage. Was it the boat? He moved faster, hearing the compys behind him.

He pushed through the foliage and then saw a little shed, like a toolshed or a guardhouse, made of concrete, with a tin roof. It had a square window, and light was shining through the window. He fell again, got to his knees, and crawled the rest of the way to the house. He reached the door, pulled himself up on the doorknob, and opened the door.

Inside, the shed was empty. Some pipes came up through the floor. Some time in the past, they had connected to machinery, but the machinery was gone; there were only the rust spots where it had once been bolted to the concrete floor.

In a corner of the room was an electric light. It was fitted with a timer, so that it came on at night. That was the light he had seen. Did they have electricity on this island? How? He didn’t care. He staggered into the room, closed the door firmly behind him, and sank down onto the bare concrete. Through the dirty windowpanes, he saw the compys outside, banging against the glass, hopping in frustration. But he was safe for the moment.

He would have to go on, of course. He would somehow have to get off this fucking island. But not now, he thought.

Later.

He’d worry about everything later.

Dodgson laid his cheek on the damp concrete floor, and slept.

Trailer

Sarah Harding placed the aluminum-foil cuff around the baby’s injured leg. The baby was still unconscious, breathing easily, not moving. Its body was relaxed. The oxygen hissed softly.

She finished shaping the aluminum foil into a cuff six inches long. Using a small brush, she began to paint resin over it, to make a cast.

“How many raptors are there?” she said. “I couldn’t tell for sure, when I saw them. I thought nine.”

“I think there’s more,” Malcolm said. “I think eleven or twelve in all.”

“Twelve?” she said, glancing up at him. “On this little island?”

“Yes.”

The resin had a sharp odor, like glue. She brushed it evenly on the aluminum. “You know what I’m thinking,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “There are too many.”

“Far too many, Ian.” She worked steadily. “It doesn’t make sense. In Africa, active predators like lions are very spread out. There’s one lion for every ten square kilometers. Sometimes every fifteen kilometers. That’s all the ecology can support. On an island like this, you should have no more than five raptors. Hold this.”

“Uh-huh. But don’t forget, the prey here is huge.… Some of those animals are twenty, thirty tons.”

“I’m not convinced that’s a factor,” Sarah said, “but for the sake of argument, let’s say it is. I’ll double the estimate, and give you ten raptors for the island. But you tell me there are twelve. And there are other major predators, as well. Like the rexes …”

“Yes. There are.”

“That’s too many,” she said, shaking her head.

“The animals are pretty dense here,” Malcolm said.

“Not dense enough,” she said. “In general, predator studies—whether tigers in India, or lions in Africa—all seem to show that you can support one predator for every two hundred prey animals. That means to support twenty-five predators here, you need at least five thousand prey on this island. Do you have anything like that?”

“No.”

“How many animals in total do you think are here?”

He shrugged. “A couple of hundred. Maybe five hundred at most.”

“So you’re off by an order of magnitude, Ian. Hold this, and I’ll get the lamp.”

She swung the heat lamp over the baby, to harden the resin. She adjusted the oxygen mask over the baby’s snout.

“The island can’t support all those predators,” she said. “And yet they’re here.”

He said, “What could explain it?”

She shook her head. “There has to be a food source that we don’t know about.”

“You mean, an artificial source?” he said. “I don’t think there is one.”

“No,” she said. “Artificial food sources make animals tame. And these animals aren’t tame. The only other possibility I can think of is that there’s a differential death rate among prey. If they grow very fast, or die young, then that might represent a larger food supply than expected.”

Malcolm said, “I’ve noticed, the largest animals seem small. It’s as if they don’t seem to reach maturity. Maybe they’re being killed off early.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But if there’s a differential death rate large enough to support this population, you should see evidence of carcasses, and lots of skeletons of dead animals. Have you seen that?”

Malcolm shook his head. “No. In fact, now that you mention it, I haven’t seen any skeletons at all.”

“Me neither.” She pushed the light away. “There’s something funny about this island, Ian.”

“I know,” Malcolm said.

“You do?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’ve suspected it from the beginning.”

Thunder rumbled. From the high hide, the plain below them was dark and silent, except for the distant snarling of the raptors. “Maybe we should go back,” Eddie said anxiously.

“Why?” Levine said. Levine had switched to his night-vision glasses, pleased with himself that he had thought to bring them. Through the goggles, the world was shades of pale green. He clearly saw the raptors at the kill site, the tall grass trampled and bloody all around. The carcass was long since finished, though they could still hear the cracking of bones as the animals gnawed on them.

“I just think,” Eddie said, “that now that it’s night, we’d be safer in the trailer.”

“Why?” Levine said.

“Well, it’s reinforced, it’s strong, and very safe. It has everything that we need. I just think we should be there. I mean, you’re not planning on staying out here all night, are you?”

“No,” Levine said. “What do you think I am, a fanatic?”

Eddie grunted.

“But let’s stay for a while longer,” Levine said.

Eddie turned to Thorne. “Doc? What do you say? It’s going to start raining soon.”

“Just a little longer,” Thorne said. “And then we’ll all go back together.”

“There have been dinosaurs on this island for five years, maybe more,” Malcolm said, “but none have appeared elsewhere. Suddenly, in the last year, carcasses of dead animals are showing up on the beaches of Costa Rica, and according to reports, on islands of the Pacific as well.”

“Carried by currents?”

“Presumably. But the question is, why now? Why all of a sudden, after five years? Something has changed, but we don’t know—wait a minute.” He moved away from the table, over to the computer console. He turned toward the screen.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“Arby got us into the old network,” he said, “and it still has research files from the eighties.” He moved the mouse across the screen. “We haven’t looked at them.…” He saw the menu come up, showing work files and research files. He began to scroll through screens of text.

“Years ago, they had trouble with some disease,” he said. “There were a lot of notes about it in the laboratory.”

“What kind of disease?”

“They didn’t know,” Malcolm said.

“In the wild, there are some very slow-acting illnesses,” she said. “May take five or ten years to show up. Caused by viruses, or prions. You know, protein fragments—like scrapie or mad-cow disease.”

“But,” Malcolm said, “those diseases only come from eating contaminated food.”

There was a silence.

“What do you suppose they fed them, back then?” she asked. “Because if I was growing baby dinosaurs, I’d wonder. What do they eat? Milk, I suppose, but—”

“Milk, yes,” Malcolm said, reading the screens. “First six weeks, goat’s milk.”

“That’s the logical choice,” she said. “Goat’s milk is what they always use in zoos, because it’s so hypoallergenic. But what about later?”

“Give me a minute here,” Malcolm said.

Harding held the baby’s leg in her hand, waiting for the resin to harden. She looked at the cast, sniffed it. It was still strong-smelling. “I hope that’s all right,” she said. “Sometimes if there’s a distinctive smell, the animals won’t allow infants to return. But maybe this will dissipate after the compound hardens. How long has it been?”

Malcolm glanced at his watch. “Ten minutes. Another ten minutes and it’ll set.”

She said, “I’d like to take this guy back to the nest.”

Thunder rumbled. They looked out the window at the black night.

“Probably too late to return him tonight,” Malcolm said. He was still typing, peering at the screen.

“So … what did they feed them? Okay. In the period from 1988 to 1989 … the herbivores got a macerated plant matter on a feeding schedule three times a day … and the carnivores got …”

He stopped.

“What’d the carnivores get?”

“Looks like a ground-up extract of animal protein.…”

“From what? The usual source is turkey or chicken, with some antibiotics added.”

“Sarah,” he said. “They used sheep extract.”

“No,” she said. “They wouldn’t do that.”

“Yeah, they did. Came from their supplier, who used ground-up sheep.”

“You’re kidding,” she said.

Malcolm said, “I’m afraid so. Now, let me see if I can find out—”

A soft alarm sounded. On the wall panel above him, a red light began to flash. A moment later, the exterior lights above the trailer turned on, bathing the grassy clearing around them in bright halogen glare.

“What’s that?” Harding said.

“The sensors—something set them off.” Malcolm moved away from the computer, peered out the window. He saw nothing but tall grass, and the dark trees at the perimeter. It was silent, still.

Sarah, still intent on the baby, said, “What happened?”

“I don’t know. I don’t see anything.”

“But something triggered the sensors?”

“I guess.”

“Wind?”

“There’s no wind,” he said.

In the high hide, Kelly said, “Hey, look!”

Thorne turned. From their location in the valley, they could look north to the high cliff behind them and the two trailers above, in the grassy clearing.

The exterior lights on the trailers had come on.

Thorne unclipped the radio at his belt. “Ian? Are you there?”

A momentary crackle: “I’m here, Doc.”

“What’s happening?”

“I don’t know,” Malcolm said. “The perimeter lights just turned on. I think the sensor was activated. But we don’t see anything out there.”

Eddie said, “Air’s cooling off fast now. Might have been convection currents, set it off.”

Thorne said, “Ian? Everything okay?”

“Yes. Fine. Don’t worry.”

Eddie said, “I always figured we set the sensitivity too high. That’s all it is.”

Levine frowned, and said nothing.

Sarah finished with the baby, and wrapped him in a blanket, and gently strapped him down to the table with cloth restraint straps. She came over and stood beside Malcolm. She looked out the window.

“What do you think?”

Malcolm shrugged. “Eddie says the system’s too sensitive.”

“Is it?”

“I don’t know. It’s never been tested before.” He scanned the trees at the edge of the clearing, looking for any movement. Then he thought he heard a snorting sound, almost a growl. It seemed like it was answered from somewhere behind him. He went to look out the other side of the trailer, at the trees on the other side.

Malcolm and Harding looked out, straining to see something in the night. Malcolm held his breath, tensely. After a moment, Harding sighed. “I don’t see anything, Ian.”

“No. Me neither.”

“Must be a false alarm.”

Then he felt the vibration, a deep resonant thumping in the ground, that was carried to them through the floor of the trailer. He glanced at Sarah. Her eyes widened.

Malcolm knew what it was. The vibration came again, unmistakably this time.

Sarah stared out the window. She whispered, “Ian: I see it.”

Malcolm turned, and joined her. She was pointing out the window toward the nearest trees.

“What?”

And then he saw the big head emerge from the foliage midway up one tree. The head turned slowly from side to side, as if listening. It was an adult Tyrannosaurus rex.

“Ian,” she whispered. “Look—there are two of them.”

Over to the right, he saw a second animal step from behind the trees. It was larger, the female of the pair. The animals growled, a deep rumble in the night. They emerged slowly from the cover of the trees, stepping into the clearing. They blinked in the harsh light.

“Are those the parents?”

“I don’t know. I think so.”

He glanced over at the baby. It was still unconscious, breathing steadily, the blanket rising and falling regularly.

“What are they doing here?” she said.

“I don’t know.”

The animals were still standing at the edge of the clearing, near the cover of the trees. They seemed hesitant, waiting.

“Are they looking for the baby?” she said.

“Sarah, please.”

“I’m serious.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Why? They must have tracked it here.”

The tyrannosaurs raised their heads, lifting their jaws. Then they turned their heads left and right, in slow arcs. They repeated the movement, then took a step forward, toward the trailer.

“Sarah,” he said. “We’re miles from the nest. There isn’t any way for them to track it.”

“How do you know?”

“Sarah—”

“You said yourself, we don’t know anything about these animals. We don’t know anything about their physiology, their biochemistry, their nervous systems, their behavior. And we don’t know anything about their sensory equipment, either.”

“Yes, but—”

“They’re predators, Ian. Good sense of vision, good sense of hearing and smell.”

“I assume so, yes.”

“But we don’t know what else,” Sarah said.

“What else?” Malcolm said.

“Ian. There are other sensory modalities. Snakes sense infrared. Bats have echolocation. Birds and turtles have magnetosensors—they can detect the earth’s magnetic field, which is how they migrate. Dinosaurs may have other sensory modalities that we can’t imagine.”

“Sarah, this is ridiculous.”

“Is it? Then you tell me. What are they doing out there?”

Outside, near the trees, the tyrannosaurs had become silent. They were no longer growling, but they were still moving their heads back and forth in slow arcs, turning left and right.

Malcolm frowned. “It looks like … they’re looking around.…”

“Straight into bright lights? No, Ian. They’re blinded.”

As soon as she said it, he realized she was right But the heads were turning back and forth in that regular way. “Then what are they doing? Smelling?”

“No. Heads are high. Nostrils aren’t moving.”

“Listening?”

She nodded “Possibly.”

“Listening to what?”

“Maybe to the baby.”

He glanced over again. “Sarah. The baby is out cold.”

“I know.”

“It isn’t making any noise.”

“None that we can hear.” She stared at the tyrannosaurs. “But they’re doing something, Ian. That behavior we’re seeing has meaning. We just don’t know what it is.”

* * *

From the high hide, Levine stared through his night-vision glasses at the clearing. He saw the two tyrannosaurs standing at the edge of the forest. They were moving their heads in an odd, synchronized way.

They took a few hesitant steps toward the trailer, lifted their heads, turned right and left, and then seemed finally to make up their minds. The animals moved quickly, almost aggressively, across the clearing.

Over the radio, they heard Malcolm say, “It’s the lights! The lights are drawing them.”

A moment later, the exterior lights were turned off, and the clearing went black. They all squinted in the darkness. They heard Malcolm say, “That did it.”

Thorne said to Levine, “What do you see?”

“Nothing.”

“What’re they doing?”

“They’re just standing there.”

Through the night-vision goggles, he saw that the tyrannosaurs had paused, as if confused by this change in light. Even from a distance, he could hear their growls, but they were uneasy. They swung their great heads up and down, and snapped their jaws. But they did not move closer.

Kelly said, “What is it?”

“They’re waiting,” Levine said. “At least for the moment.”

Levine had the distinct impression that the tyrannosaurs were unsettled. The trailer must represent a large and fearsome change in their environment. Perhaps they would turn away, he thought, and leave. Despite their enormous size, they were cautious, almost timid animals.

They growled again. And then he saw them move forward, toward the darkened trailer.

“Ian: what do we do?”

“Damned if I know,” Malcolm whispered.

They were crouched down side by side in the passageway, trying to stay out of sight in the windows. The tyrannosaurs moved implacably forward. They could feel each step as a distinct vibration now—two ten-ton animals, moving toward them.

“They’re coming right at us!”

“I noticed,” he said.

The first of the animals reached the trailer, coming so close that the body blocked the entire window. All Malcolm could see was powerfully muscled legs and underbelly. The head was far above them, out of view.

Then the second tyrannosaur came up on the opposite side. The two animals began to circle the trailer, growling and snorting. Heavy footsteps shook the floor beneath them. They smelled the pungent predator odor. One of the tyrannosaurs brushed against the side of the trailer and they heard a scraping sound, scaly flesh on metal.

Malcolm felt sudden panic. It was the smell that did it, the smell that he suddenly remembered, from before. He began to sweat. He glanced over at Sarah, and saw that she was intent, watching the movements of the animals. “This isn’t hunting behavior,” she whispered.

“I don’t know,” Malcolm said. “Maybe it is. They aren’t lions, you know.”

One of the tyrannosaurs bellowed in the night, a frightening, ear-splitting sound.

“Not hunting,” she said. “They’re searching, Ian.”

A moment later, the second tyrannosaur bellowed in reply. Then the big head swung down, and peered in through the window in front of them, Malcolm ducked down, flattening himself on the trailer floor, and Sarah collapsed on top of him. Her shoe pressed on his ear.

“It’s going to be fine, Sarah.”

Outside, they heard the tyrannosaurs snorting and growling.

Malcolm whispered, “Would you mind moving?”

She edged to one side, and he eased up slowly, peering cautiously over the seat cushions. He had a glimpse of the big eye of the rex staring in at him. The eye swiveled in the socket. He saw the jaws open and close. The hot breath of the animal fogged the glass.

The tyrannosaur’s head swung away, moving back from the trailer, and for a moment Malcolm breathed more easily. But then the head swung back, and slammed with a heavy thud into the trailer, rocking it hard.

“Don’t worry, Sarah. The trailer’s very strong.”

She whispered, “I can’t tell you how relieved I am.”

From the opposite side, the other rex bellowed and struck the trailer with its snout. The suspension creaked with the impact.

The two tyrannosaurs now began an alternating, rhythmic pounding of the trailer from either side. Malcolm and Harding were thrown back and forth. Sarah tried to steady herself, but was knocked away at the next impact. The floor tilted crazily under each blow. Lab equipment flew off the tables. Glass shattered.

And then, abruptly, the pounding stopped. There was silence.

Grunting, Malcolm got up on one knee. He peered out the window, and saw the hindquarters of one of the tyrannosaurs, as it moved forward.

“What do we do?” he whispered.

The radio crackled. Thorne said, “Ian, are you there? Ian!”

“For God’s sake, turn that off,” Sarah whispered.

Malcolm reached for his belt, whispered, “We’re okay,” and clicked the radio off.

Sarah was crawling on her hands and knees forward through the trailer, into the biology lab. He followed her, and saw the big tyrannosaur peering in through the window, at the baby, strapped down. The tyrannosaur made a soft grunting sound.

Then it paused, looking in the window.

It grunted again.

“She wants her baby, Ian,” Sarah whispered.

“Well, God knows,” Malcolm said, “it’s all right with me.” They were huddled on the floor, trying to stay out of sight.

“How are we going to get it to her?”

“I don’t know. Maybe push it out the door?”

“I don’t want them to step on it,” Sarah said.

“Who cares?” Malcolm said.

The tyrannosaur at the window made a series of soft grunts, followed by a long, menacing growl. It was the big female.

“Sarah—”

But she was already standing up, facing the tyrannosaur. She immediately began to speak, her voice soft, soothing. “It’s okay.… It’s all right now.… The baby is fine.… I’m just going to loosen these straps here.… You can watch me.…”

The head outside the window was so huge it filled the entire glass frame. Sarah saw the powerful muscles of the neck ripple beneath the skin. The jaws moved slightly. Her hands trembled as she undid the straps.

“That’s right.… Your baby is fine.… See, it’s just fine.…”

Crouched below at her feet, Malcolm whispered, “What are you doing?”

She did not change her soft, soothing tone. “I know it sounds crazy.… But it works with lions … sometimes.… There we are.… Your baby is free.…”

Sarah unwrapped the blanket, and took away the oxygen mask, all the while speaking calmly. “Now … all I have to do …” She lifted the baby up in her hands. “… is get it to you.…”

Suddenly, the female’s head swung back, and smashed side-on into the glass, which shattered into a white spiderweb with a harsh crack. Sarah couldn’t see through it, but she saw a shadow move and then the second impact broke the glass free. Sarah dropped the baby on the tray and jumped back as the head crashed through, and pushed several feet into the trailer. Streams of blood ran down the adult’s snout, from the shards of glass. But after the initial violence it stopped, and became delicate in its movements. It sniffed the baby, starting at the head, moving slowly down the body. It sniffed the cast, too, and licked it briefly with its tongue. Finally, it rested its lower jaw lightly on the baby’s chest. It stayed that way for a long time, not moving. Only the eyes blinked slowly, staring at Sarah.

Malcolm, lying on the floor, saw blood dripping over the edge of the counter. He started to get up, but she pushed his head back down with her hand. She whispered, “Ssssh.”

“What’s happening?”

“It’s feeling the heartbeat.”

The tyrannosaur grunted, opened its mouth, and gently gripped the infant between its jaws. Then it moved slowly back, out through the broken glass, carrying the baby outside.

It set the baby on the ground, below their vision. It bent over, the head disappearing from view.

Malcolm whispered, “Did it wake up? Is the baby awake?”

“Ssssh!”

There was a repetitive slurping sound, coming from outside the trailer. It was interspersed with soft, guttural growls. Malcolm saw Sarah leaning forward, trying to see out the window. He whispered, “What’s happening?”

“She’s licking him. And pushing him with her snout.”

“And?”

“That’s all. She just keeps doing it.”

“What about the baby?”

“Nothing. It keeps rolling over, like it’s dead. How much morphine did we give him, the last time?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “How should I know?”

Malcolm remained on the floor, listening to the slurping and the growling. And finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he heard a soft high-pitched squeak.

“He’s waking up! Ian! The baby’s waking up!”

Malcolm crawled up on his knees, and looked out the window in time to see the adult carrying the baby in its jaws, walking away toward the perimeter of the clearing.

“What’s it doing?”

“I guess, taking it back.”

The second adult came into view, following the first. Malcolm and Sarah watched the two tyrannosaurs move away from the trailer, across the clearing.

Malcolm’s shoulders dropped. “That was close,” he said.

“Yes. That was close.” She sighed, and wiped blood from her forearm.

In the high hide, Thorne pressed the radio button. “Ian! Are you there? Ian!”

Kelly said, “Maybe they turned the radio off.”

A light rain began to fall, pattering on the metal roof of the shed. Levine was staring through his night-vision glasses toward the cliff. Lightning flashed, and Thorne said, “Can you see what the animals are doing?”

“I can,” Eddie said. “It looks … it looks like they’re going away.”

They all began to cheer.

Only Levine remained silent, watching through the glasses. Thorne turned to him. “Is that right, Richard? Is everything okay?”

“Actually, I think not,” Levine said. “I’m afraid we have made a serious error.”

Malcolm watched the retreating tyrannosaurs through the shattered glass window. Beside him, Sarah said nothing. She never took her eyes off the animals.

Rain started to fall; water dripped from the shards of glass. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and lightning cracked harshly down, illuminating the giant animals as they moved away.

At the nearest of the big trees, the adults stopped, and placed the baby on the ground.

“Why are they doing that?” Sarah said. “They should be going back to the nest.”

“I don’t know, maybe they’re—”

“Maybe the baby is dead,” she said.

But no, in the next flash of lightning they could see the baby moving. It was still alive. They could hear its high-pitched squeaking as one of the adults took the baby in its jaws, and gently placed it in a fork among the high branches of a tree.

“Oh no,” Sarah said, shaking her head. “This is wrong, Ian. This is all wrong.”

The female tyrannosaur remained with the baby for some moments, moving it, positioning it. Then the female turned, opened its jaws, and roared.

The male tyrannosaur roared in response.

And then both animals charged the trailer at full speed, racing across the clearing toward them.

“Oh, my God,” Sarah said.

“Brace yourself, Sarah!” Malcolm shouted. “It’s going to be bad!”

The impact was stunning, knocking them sideways through the air. Sarah screamed as she tumbled away. Malcolm hit his head and fell to the floor, seeing stars. Beneath him, the trailer rocked on its suspension, with a metallic scream. The tyrannosaurs roared, and slammed into it again.

He heard her shouting, “Ian! Ian!” and then the trailer crashed over onto its side. Malcolm turned away; glassware and lab equipment smashed all around him. When he looked up, everything was cockeyed. Directly above him was the broken window the tyrannosaur had smashed. Rain dripped through onto Malcolm’s face. Lightning flashed, and then he saw a big head peering down at him and snarling. He heard the harsh scratching of the tyrannosaurs’ claws on the metal side of the trailer, then the face disappeared. A moment later, he heard them bellowing as they pushed the trailer through the dirt.

He called “Sarah!” and he saw her, somewhere behind him, just as the world spun crazily again, and the trailer was upended with a crash. Now the trailer was lying on its roof; Malcolm started crawling along the ceiling, trying to reach Sarah. He looked up at the lab equipment, locked down on the lab benches, above his head. Liquid dripped onto him from a dozen sources. Something stung his shoulder. He heard a hiss, and realized it must be acid.

Somewhere in the darkness ahead, Sarah was groaning. Lightning flashed again, and Malcolm saw her, lying crumpled near the accordion junction that connected the two trailers. That junction was twisted almost shut, which must mean that the second trailer was still upright. It was crazy. Everything was crazy.

Outside, the tyrannosaurs roared, and he heard a muffled explosion. They were biting the tires. He thought: Too bad they don’t bite into the battery cable. That’d give them a real surprise.

Suddenly, the tyrannosaurs slammed into the trailer again, knocking it laterally along the clearing. As soon as it stopped, they slammed again. The trailer lurched sideways.

By then he had reached Sarah. She threw her arms around him. “Ian,” she said. The whole left half of her face was dark. When the lightning flashed, he saw it was covered in blood.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said. With the back of her hand, she wiped blood out of her eye. “Can you see what it is?”

In another lightning flash, he saw the glint of a large chunk of glass, embedded near her hairline. He pulled it out, and pressed his hand against the sudden gush of blood. They were in the kitchen; he reached up toward the stove, and pulled down a dishtowel. He held it against her head, and watched the cloth darken.

“Does it hurt?”

“It’s okay.”

“I think it’s not too bad,” he said. Outside, the tyrannosaurs roared in the night.

“What are they doing?” she said. Her voice was dull.

The tyrannosaurs slammed into the trailer again. With this impact, the trailer seemed to move a lot more than before, sliding sideways—and down.

Sliding down.

“They’re pushing us,” he said.

“Where, Ian?”

“To the edge of the clearing.” The tyrannosaurs slammed again, and the trailer moved farther. “They’re pushing us over the cliff.” The cliff was five hundred feet of sheer rock, straight down to the valley below.

They’d never survive the fall.

She held the dishtowel with her own hand, pushing his hand away. “Do something.”

“Yeah, okay,” he said.

He moved away from her, bracing for the next impact. He didn’t know what to do. He had no idea what to do. The trailer was upside down, and everything was crazy. His shoulder burned and he could smell the acid eating his shirt. Or maybe it was his flesh. It burned a lot. The whole trailer was dark, all the power was out, there was glass everywhere, and he—

All the power was out.

Malcolm started to get to his feet, but the next impact flung him sideways, and he fell hard, slamming his head against the refrigerator. The door swung open and cartons of cold milk, glass bottles, crashed down on him. But there was no light from the refrigerator.

Because all the power was out.

Lying on his back, Malcolm looked out the window and saw the big foot of a tyrannosaur standing in the grass. Lightning flashed as the foot raised to kick, and immediately the trailer moved again, sliding easily now, metal screeching, and then tilting downward.

“Oh, shit,” he said.

“Ian …”

But it was too late, the whole trailer was groaning and creaking in metallic protest, and then Malcolm saw the far end sink down, as the trailer slid over the cliff. It started slowly, and then gathered speed, the ceiling they were lying on falling away, everything falling, Sarah falling, clutching at him as she went, and the tyrannosaurs bellowing in triumph.

We’re going over the cliff, he thought.

Not knowing what else to do, he grabbed the refrigerator door, hanging on tightly. The door was cold, and slippery with moisture. The trailer tilted and fell, the metal creaking loudly. Malcolm felt his hands sliding off the white enamel, sliding … sliding.… And then he lost his grip and fell free, dropping helplessly straight down toward the far end of the trailer. He saw the driver’s seat rushing up to him, but before he got there he struck something in the darkness, felt a moment of searing pain, and bent double.

And slowly, gently, everything around him went black.

Rain drummed on the roof of the shed, and poured in a continuous sheet down the sides. Levine wiped the lenses of his glasses, then lifted them again to his eyes. He stared at the cliffs in the darkness.

Arby said, “What is it? What happened?”

“I can’t tell,” Levine said. It was hard to see anything in this downpour. Moments before, they had watched in horror as the two tyrannosaurs pushed the trailer toward the cliff. The large animals had done it with ease: Levine guessed the tyrannosaurs had a combined mass of twenty tons, and the trailer only weighed about two tons. Once they had turned it over, it slid easily over the wet grass as they pushed it with their underbellies, and kicked it with their powerful leg muscles.

“Why are they doing that?” Thorne said to Levine, standing beside him.

“I suspect,” he said, “that we have changed the perceived territory.”

“How’s that again?”

“You have to remember what we’re dealing with,” Levine said. “Tyrannosaurs may show complex behavior, but most of it is instinctual. It’s unthinking behavior, wired in. And territoriality is part of that instinct. The tyrannosaurs mark territory, they defend territory. It’s not thinking behavior—they don’t have very large brains—but they do it from instinct. All instinctive behavior has triggers, releasers for the behavior. And I’m afraid that, by moving the baby, we redefined their territory to include the clearing where the baby was found. So now they’re going to defend their territory, by driving out the trailers.”

Then lightning flashed, and they all saw it in the same horrifying moment. The first trailer had gone over the cliff. It was hanging upside down in space, still connected by the accordion connector to the second trailer in the clearing above.

“That connector won’t hold!” Eddie shouted. “Not long!”

In the glare of lightning, they saw the tyrannosaurs up in the clearing. Methodically, they were now pushing the second trailer toward the cliff.

Thorne turned to Eddie. “I’m going!” he said.

“I’ll come with you!” Eddie said.

“No! Stay with the kids!”

“But you need—”

“Stay with the kids! We can’t leave them alone!”

“But Levine can—”

“No, you stay!” Thorne said. He was already climbing down the scaffolding, slippery in drenching rain, toward the Explorer below. He saw Kelly and Arby looking down at him. He jumped in the car, clicked on the ignition. He was already thinking of the distance to the clearing. It was three miles, maybe more. Even driving fast, it would take him seven or eight minutes to get there.

And by then it would be too late. He’d never make it in time.

But he had to try.

Sarah Harding heard a rhythmic creaking, and opened her eyes.

Everything was dark; she was disoriented. Then lightning flashed, and she stared straight down toward the valley, five hundred feet below. The view swung gently, back and forth.

She was looking through the windshield of the trailer, hanging down the side of the cliff. They were not falling any more. But they were hanging precariously in space.

She herself was lying across the driver’s seat, which had broken free of its mounting, and shattered a control panel in the wall; loose wires hung out, panel indicators flickered.

She was having trouble seeing, from the blood in her left eye. She pulled out the tail of her shirt, and ripped two strips of cloth. She folded one to make a compress, and pressed it against the gash on her forehead. Then she tied the second strip around her head, to hold the compress down. The pain was intense for a moment; she gritted her teeth until it faded.

From somewhere above her, she felt a thumping vibration. She turned, and looked straight up. She saw the whole length of the trailer, suspended vertically. Malcolm was ten feet above her, bent over a lab table, not moving.

“Ian,” she said.

He didn’t answer. He didn’t move.

The trailer shuddered again, creaking under a dull impact. And then Harding realized what was happening. The first trailer was dangling straight down the cliff face, swinging freely in space. But it was still connected to the second trailer, up on the clearing. The first trailer now hung from the accordion connector. And the tyrannosaurs, up above, were now pushing the second trailer off the cliff.

“Ian,” she said. “Ian.”

She scrambled to her feet, ignoring the pain in her body. She felt a wave of dizziness, and wondered how much blood she had lost. She began to climb straight up, standing first on the back of the driver’s seat, grabbing for the nearest biology table. She pulled herself upward, until she could reach a handle mounted in the wall. The trailer swayed beneath her.

From the handle, she managed to grab the refrigerator door, putting her fingers through a wire shelf. She tested it, it held, and she gave it her full weight. She raised her leg, until she got her shoe into the refrigerator itself. Then she swung her body still higher, until she was standing up and could reach the handle to the oven.

It was like mountain climbing through a damn kitchen, she thought.

Soon she was alongside Malcolm. Lightning flashed again, and she saw his battered face. He groaned. She crawled over to him, trying to see how badly he was hurt.

“Ian,” she said.

His eyes were closed. “Sorry.”

“Never mind.”

“I got you into this.”

“Ian. Can you move? Are you okay?”

He groaned. “My leg.”

“Ian. We have to do something.”

From the clearing above them, she heard the tyrannosaurs roaring. It seemed to her that they had been roaring her whole life. The trailer lurched and swung; her legs slid out of the refrigerator and she was hanging free in space from the oven door. The far end of the trailer was some twenty feet below.

The oven handle wouldn’t hold her weight, she knew. Not for long.

Harding swung her legs, kicking wildly, finally touched something solid. She felt with her feet, then stepped down. Looking back, she saw she was standing on the side of the stainless-steel sink. She moved her foot and the faucet turned on, soaking her feet.

The tyrannosaurs roared, pounding hard. The trailer moved farther out into space, swinging.

“Ian. There’s not much time. We have to do something.”

He raised his head, stared at her with blank eyes. Lightning flashed again. His lips moved. “Power,” he said.

“What about it?”

“Power is off.”

She didn’t know what he was talking about. Of course the power was off. Then she remembered: he had turned it off earlier. When the tyrannosaurs were approaching. The light had bothered them before, maybe it would bother them again.

“You want me to turn the power on?”

His head nodded fractionally. “Yes. Turn it on.”

“How, Ian?” She looked around in the darkness.

“There’s a panel.”

“Where?”

He didn’t answer her. She reached out, shook his shoulder. “Ian: where is the panel?”

He pointed downward.

She looked down, saw the loose wires from the panel. “I can’t. It’s broken.”

“Up …”

She could hardly hear him. Vaguely, she remembered that there was another control panel just inside the second trailer. If she could get in, she might be able to turn the power on. “Okay, Ian,” she said. “I’ll do it.”

She moved on, going higher. The floor of the trailer was now thirty feet below her. The tyrannosaurs roared, and kicked again. She swung in space. She moved on.

She intended to go through the accordion passage into the second trailer, but as she came closer to the top, she saw that it was not possible. In the harsh flare of lightning, she saw the accordion passage was twisted tightly shut.

She was trapped in the first trailer.

She heard the tyrannosaurs bellowing, and slamming the second trailer above. “Ian!”

She looked down. He wasn’t moving.

Hanging there, she realized with a sick feeling that she was defeated. Another kick, another two kicks, and it would be all over. They would fall. There was nothing they could do. There was no time left. She was hanging suspended in blackness, the power was out, and there was nothing—

Or was there? She heard an electrical hum, not far away in the darkness. Was there a panel up here, at this end of the trailer? Did they design it to have panels at both ends?

Hanging near the top of the trailer, her shoulders and forearms burning with strain, she looked around for a second power panel. She was up near the far end. If there was a panel, it should be nearby. But where? In the glare of lightning, she looked over one shoulder, then the other.

She saw no panel.

Her arms ached.

“Ian, please …”

No panel.

It wasn’t possible. She kept hearing that hum. There had to be a panel. She just wasn’t seeing it. There had to be a panel. She swung left and right, and lightning flashed again, casting crazy shadows, and then at last she saw it.

It was just six inches above her head. It was upside down, but she could see all the buttons and switches. They were dark now. If she could just figure out which was which—

The hell with it.

She released her right hand, and hanging from her left, pressed every button on the panel she could touch. Immediately, the trailer began to light up, every interior light coming on.

She kept pressing the buttons, one after another. Some shorted out; there were sparks and smoke.

She kept pressing more.

Suddenly the side monitor came on, just inches from her face, a streaky video blur. Then it came into focus. Although she was looking at it sideways, she could see the tyrannosaurs up on the clearing, standing over the second trailer, their forearms touching it, their powerful legs kicking and pushing at it. She pressed more buttons. The final one had a silver protective cover; she flipped the cover open, and pressed that button, too.

On the monitor she saw the tyrannosaurs disappear in a sudden flaring burst of incandescent sparks, and she heard them roar in rage. And then the video monitor went off, and there was a crackling explosion of sparks all around Harding, stinging her face and hands, and then everything in the trailer went off, and it was dark again.

There was silence for a long moment.

Then, inexorably, the pounding began again.

Thorne

The windshield wipers flicked back and forth. Thorne took the curves fast, despite the driving rain. He glanced at his watch. Two minutes gone, perhaps three.

Perhaps more. He wasn’t sure.

The road was a muddy track, slippery and dangerous. He splashed through deep puddles, holding his breath each time. The car had been waterproofed back in his shop, but you were never sure about these things. Each puddle was another test. So far, so good.

Three minutes gone.

At least three.

The road curved, opened out, and in a flash of lightning he saw a deep puddle ahead. He accelerated through it, the car kicking up plumes of water on both side windows. And then he was through it, still going. Still going! As he headed up a hill, he saw the dashboard needles swing wildly, and he heard the sizzle that he knew meant a fatal electrical short. There was an explosion under the hood, and acrid smoke poured out from the radiator, and the car stopped dead.

Four minutes.

He sat in the car, hearing the rain pound on the metal roof. He turned the ignition key. Nothing happened.

Dead.

Rain poured in sheets down the windshield. He sat back in his seat, sighed, and stared at the road ahead. The radio crackled on the seat beside him. “Doc? Are you almost there?”

Thorne stared at the road, trying to guess where he was. He estimated that he must still be more than a mile from the trailer in the clearing, maybe more. Too far to try it on foot. He swore, and pounded the seat.

“No, Eddie. I shorted.”

“You what?”

“Eddie, the car’s dead. I’m—”

Thorne broke off.

He noticed something.

From around the curve ahead, he saw a faint, flashing red glow. Thorne squinted, trying to be sure. Yes, his eyes were not playing tricks on him. It was there, all right: a flashing red glow.

Eddie said: “Doc? You there?”

Thorne didn’t answer; he grabbed the radio and the Lindstradt rifle, jumped out of the car, and ducking his head against the rain, began to run up the hill toward the junction of the ridge road. Coming around a curve, he saw the red Jeep, standing in the middle of the ridge road, its taillights flashing. One of the lights was broken, glaring white.

He ran forward, trying to see inside. In a flash of lightning he could see there was no driver. The driver’s door was not even closed; the side was deeply dented. Thorne climbed inside, reaching down with his hand for the steering wheel.… Yes, the keys were there! He turned the ignition. The motor rumbled to life.

He shoved the Jeep in gear, backed it around, and headed up the ridge toward the clearing. It was only another few curves before he saw the green roof of the laboratory and turned left, his headlights swinging across the grassy clearing, and shining onto the dinosaurs pushing the trailer.

Confronted by these new lights, the tyrannosaurs turned in unison, and bellowed at Thorne’s Jeep. They abandoned the trailer, and charged. Thorne threw the Jeep into reverse and was backing away frantically before he realized the animals were not coming toward him.

Instead, they were running diagonally across the clearing, toward a tree near Thorne. Beneath the tree they paused, their heads turned upward. Thorne doused his lights, and waited. Now he saw the animals only intermittently, in the flashes of lightning. In one crackling burst, he saw them take down the baby from the tree. Then he saw them nuzzling the baby. Obviously his sudden arrival had made them anxious about the infant.

The next time lightning flashed, the tyrannosaurs were gone. The clearing was empty. Were they really gone? Or were they just hiding? He rolled down the window, stuck his head out in the rain. That was when he heard an odd, low, continuous squealing sound. It sounded like the extended cry of an animal, but it was too steady, too continuous. As he listened, he realized it was something else. It was metal.

Thorne turned on his lights again, and drove forward slowly. The tyrannosaurs were gone. In the pale beam of the headlamps, he saw the second trailer.

With a continuous metallic squeal, it was still sliding slowly across the wet grass, toward the edge of the cliff.

“What is he doing now?” Kelly yelled, over the rain.

“He’s driving,” Levine said, looking through goggles. From the high hide, they could see Thorne’s headlamps cross the clearing. “He’s driving to the trailer. And he’s …”

“He’s what?” Kelly said. “What is he doing now?”

“He’s driving around and around a tree,” Levine said. “A big tree by the clearing.”

“Why?”

“He must be running the cable around the tree,” Eddie said. “That’s the only possible reason.”

There was a moment of silence.

“What’s he doing now?” Arby said.

“He’s gotten out of the Jeep. Now he’s running toward the trailer.”

Thorne was down on his hands and knees in the mud, holding the big hook of the Jeep winch in his hands. The trailer was sliding away from him, but he managed to crawl beneath it, and get the hook around the rear axle. He pulled his fingers clear just as the hook slammed tight against the brake cover, and he rolled his body away. Newly restrained, the trailer jumped sideways in the grass, the tires slamming down where his body had been moments before.

The metal cable from the winch was pulled taut. The whole underbelly of the trailer creaked in protest.

But it held.

Thorne crawled out from beneath the trailer, and squinted at it in the rain. He looked carefully at the wheels of the Jeep, to see if they were moving at all. No. With the cable wrapped around the tree, the counterbalancing weight of the Jeep was enough to hold the second trailer on the rim of the cliff.

He went back to the Jeep, climbed inside, and set the brake. He heard Eddie saying, “Doc. Doc.”

“I’m here, Eddie.”

“You manage to stop it?”

“Yeah. It’s not moving any more.”

The radio crackled. “That’s great. But listen. Doc. You know that connector is just five-mil mesh over stainless rod. It was never intended to—”

“I know, Eddie. I’m working on it.” Thorne climbed out of the car again. He ran quickly through the rain toward the trailer.

He opened the side door, and went inside. The interior was inky black. He could see nothing at all. Everything was overturned. His feet crunched on glass. All the windows were shattered. He held the radio in his hand. “Eddie!”

“Yes, Doc.”

“I need rope.” He knew that Eddie had all sorts of supplies squirreled away.

“Doc …”

“Just tell me.”

“It’s in the other trailer, Doc.”

Thorne crashed against a table in the darkness. “Great.”

“There might be some nylon line in the utility locker,” Eddie said. “But I don’t know how much.” He didn’t sound hopeful. Thorne pushed his way down the trailer, came to the wall cabinets. They were jammed shut. He tugged at them in the darkness, then turned away. The utility locker was just beyond. Maybe there would be rope there. And right now, he needed rope.

Trailer

Sarah Harding, still hanging by her arms from the top of the trailer, stared up at the twisted accordion connector, leading to the second trailer. The pounding from the dinosaurs had stopped, and the other trailer was no longer moving. But now she felt water, dripping cold onto her face. And she knew what that meant.

The accordion connector was beginning to leak.

She looked up, and saw a tear had begun to open in the mesh fabric, revealing the twisted coils of steel that formed the connector. The tear was small now, but it would rapidly widen. And as the mesh broke, the steel would begin to uncoil, to lengthen, and finally snap.

They had only minutes before the hanging trailer broke free and fell to the ground below.

She climbed back down to Malcolm, bracing herself to stand beside him. “Ian.”

“I know,” he said, shaking his head.

“Ian, we have to get out of here.” She grabbed him under his armpits, and pulled him upright. “And you’re coming with me.”

He shook his head, defeated. She had seen that gesture before in her life, that futile shake, giving up. She hated to see it. Harding never gave up. Not ever.

Malcolm grunted. “I can’t.…”

“You have to,” she said.

“Sarah …”

“I don’t want to hear it, Ian. There’s nothing to talk about. Now let’s go.” She was pulling him, and he groaned, but he straightened his body. She pulled hard, and got him up off the table. Lightning flashed, and he seemed to find some energy. He managed to stand on the edge of the seat, facing the table. He was unsteady, but standing. “What do we do?”

“I don’t know, but we’re going to get out of here.… Is there any rope?”

He nodded, weakly.

“Where?”

He pointed straight down, toward the nose of the trailer, now hanging in space. “Down there. Under the dash.”

“Come on.”

She leaned out into space, and spread her legs so she was braced against the floor opposite her. She was standing like a rock climber in a chimney. Twenty feet below her to the dashboard.

“Okay, Ian. Let’s go.”

Malcolm said, “I can’t do it, Sarah. Seriously.”

“Then lean on me. I’ll carry you.”

“But—”

“Now, damn it!”

Malcolm hoisted himself up, grasped a wall fitting, his arm trembling. He was dragging his right leg. Then she felt his weight on her, sudden and heavy, almost knocking her free. His arms locked around her neck, choking her. She gasped, reached back with both arms, grabbed his thighs, and lifted him while he adjusted his arms better around her neck. Finally she could breathe.

“Sorry,” he said.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Here we go.”

She started to make her way down the vertical passageway, grabbing at whatever she could. In places there were handholds, and when there were no handholds, she clutched at drawer handles, table legs, window latches, even the carpeting on the floor, her fingers tearing the cloth. At one point, the carpet came away in a big strip, and she slipped before her legs tightened wider, and she halted her downward slide. Hanging behind her, Malcolm wheezed; his arms around her neck were trembling. He said, “You’re very strong.”

“But still feminine,” she said, grimly.

She was only ten feet from the dashboard. Then five. She found a wall grip, hung, dangling her legs. Her feet touched the steering wheel. She lowered herself down, easing Malcolm onto the dashboard. He lay back, gasping.

The trailer creaked and swayed. She fumbled under the dashboard, found a utility box, popped it open. Metal tools spilled out, clattering. And she found a rope. Half-inch nylon, easily fifty feet of it.

She got up, staring down through the windshield at the bottom of the valley hundreds of feet below. Directly to her side, she saw the driver’s door to the trailer. She twisted the handle, pushed it open. It clanged against the outer surface of the trailer, and she felt rain on her face.

She leaned out and looked up the side of the trailer. She saw smooth metal paneling, with no hand grips. But underneath the trailer, there must be axles and boxes and other things to stand on. Gripping the wet metal of the doorjamb, she bent over, trying to look at the underside of the trailer. She heard a metallic clanking, and she heard someone say, “Finally!” And a bulky shape suddenly loomed in front of her. It was Thorne, hanging on the undercarriage.

“For Christ’s sake,” Thorne said. “What are you waiting for, an engraved invitation? Let’s go!”

“It’s Ian,” she said. “He’s hurt.”

Typical, Kelly thought, looking at Arby in the high hide. When things got tough, he just couldn’t handle it. Too much emotion, too much tension, and he got all trembly and weird. Arby had long since turned away from the cliff, and now was looking out the other side of the shelter, toward the river. Almost as if nothing was going on. Typical.

Kelly turned back to Levine. “What’s happening now?” she said.

“Thorne just went in,” Levine said, peering through the goggles.

“He went in? You mean, in the trailer?”

“Yes. And now … someone’s coming out.”

“Who?”

“I think Sarah. She’s getting everybody out.”

Kelly strained in the night, trying to see. The rain had almost stopped; there was only a light drizzle now. Across the valley, the trailer still swung free in space. She thought she could make out a figure, clinging to the undercarriage. But she couldn’t be sure.

“What’s she doing?”

“Climbing.”

“Alone?”

“Yes,” Levine said. “Alone.”

Sarah Harding came out through the door, twisting her body in the rain. She did not look down. She knew the valley was five hundred feet below her. She could feel the trailer swinging. She had the rope slung around her shoulder. She edged around, lowered her leg, and stood on a gearbox. She felt with her hand, gripped a cable. Swung around.

Thorne was inside the trailer, talking to her. “We’ll never get Malcolm up without a rope,” he said. “Can you climb it?”

Lightning flashed. She stared straight up at the underside of the trailer, glistening wet with rain. She saw the slick gleam of grease. Then blackness again.

“Sarah: can you do it?”

“Yes,” she said. She reached up, and started to climb.

In the high hide, Kelly was saying, “Where is she? What’s happening? Is she all right?”

Levine watched through the glasses. “She’s climbing,” he said.

Arby listened to their voices distantly. He was turned away, staring off at the river in the darkened plain. He waited impatiently for the next lightning flash. Waited to see if it was true, what he had seen earlier.

She did not know how, but slipping and sliding, she somehow got to the top of the cliff, and flung herself over the side. There was no time to waste; she uncoiled the rope, and crawled beneath the second trailer. She looped the rope through a metal bracket, quickly knotted it. Then she went back to the edge of the cliff, and threw the rope down.

“Doc!” she shouted.

Standing at the trailer door, Thorne caught the rope, and tied it around Malcolm. Malcolm groaned. “Let’s go,” Thorne said. He put his arm around Malcolm and swung them both out, until they were standing on the gearbox.

“Christ,” Malcolm said, looking upward. But Sarah was already pulling him, the rope tightening.

“Just use your arms,” Thorne said. Malcolm started to rise; in a few moments, he was ten feet above Thorne. Sarah was up on the cliff, but Thorne couldn’t see her; Ian’s body blocked his view. Thorne began to climb, his legs struggling for purchase. The underside of the trailer was slippery. He thought: I should have made it nonskid. But who would ever make the undercarriage of a vehicle nonskid?

In his mind’s eye, he saw the accordion connector, tearing … slowly tearing … opening wider.…

He climbed upward. Hand over hand. Foot by foot.

Lightning flashed, and he realized that they were close to the top.

Sarah was standing on the edge of the cliff, reaching down for Malcolm. Malcolm was pulling himself up with his arms; his legs swung limp, free. But he was still going. Another few feet … Sarah grabbed Malcolm by the shirt collar, and hauled him up the rest of the way. Malcolm flopped over, out of sight.

Thorne continued up. His feet slipped. His arms ached.

He climbed.

Sarah was reaching down to him.

“Come on, Doc,” she said.

Her hand was extended.

Fingers reaching toward him.

With a metallic whang! the mesh ripped on the connector, and the trailer dropped down ten feet, the coils widening.

Thorne climbed faster. Looking up toward Sarah.

Her hand still reached down.

“You can do it, Doc.…”

He climbed, closing his eyes, just climbing, holding the rope, gripping it tightly. His arms ached, his shoulders ached, and the rope seemed to become smaller in his hands. He twisted it around his fist, trying to hold on. But at the last moment he began to slip, and then he felt a sudden burning pain in his scalp.

“Sorry about that,” Sarah said, and she pulled him up by his hair. The pain was intense but he didn’t care, he hardly noticed, because now he was alongside the accordion connector, watching the coils pop free like a bursting corset, and the trailer dropped lower but she still pulled him, she was immensely strong, and then his fingers touched wet grass, and he was over the side. Safe.

Beneath them, there was a sharp series of metallic sounds—whang! whang! whang!—as the coiled metal rods snapped one after another, and then, with a final groan, the trailer broke all connection, and fell free down the cliff face, growing smaller and smaller, until it smashed on the rocks far below. In the glare of lightning, it looked like a crumpled paper bag.

Thorne turned, and looked up at Sarah. “Thanks,” he said.

Sarah sat heavily on the ground beside him. Blood dripped from her bandaged head. She opened her fingers, and released a handful of his gray hair, which fell in a wet clump onto the grass.

“Hell of a night,” she said.

The High Hide

Watching through the night-vision glasses, Levine said, “They made it!”

Kelly said, “All of them?”

“Yes! They made it!”

Kelly began to jump and cheer.

Arby turned, and grabbed the glasses out of Levine’s hand.

“Hey,” Levine said. “Just a minute—”

“I need them,” Arby said. He spun back around and looked out at the dark plain. For a moment, he couldn’t see anything, just a green blur. His fingers found the focus knob, he twisted it quickly, and the image came into view.

“What the hell is so important?” Levine said irritably. “That’s an expensive piece of equipment—”

And then they all heard the snarling. It was coming closer.

In pale shades of luminous green, Arby saw the raptors clearly. There were twelve of them, moving in a loose cluster through the grass, heading in the direction of the high hide. One animal was a few yards ahead and seemed to be the leader; but it was hard to discern any organization in the pack. The raptors were all snarling and licking the blood off their snouts, wiping their faces with their clawed forearms, a gesture oddly intelligent, almost human. In the night-vision glasses, their eyes glowed bright green.

They did not seem to have noticed the high hide. They never looked up toward it. But they were certainly headed in that direction.

Abruptly, the glasses were yanked out of Arby’s hands. “Excuse me,” Levine said. “I think I’d better handle this.”

Arby said, “You wouldn’t even know about it, if it wasn’t for me.”

“Be quiet,” Levine said. He brought the glasses to his eyes, focused them, and sighed at what he saw. Twelve animals, about twenty yards away.

Eddie said quietly, “Do they see us?”

“No. And we’re downwind of them, so they won’t smell us. My guess is they’re following the game trail that runs past the hide. If we’re quiet, they’ll go right past us.”

Eddie’s radio crackled. He hastily reached to turn it down.

They all stared out at the plain. The night was now calm and still. The rain had stopped, and the moon was breaking through thinning clouds. Faintly, they saw the approaching animals, dark against the silver grass.

Eddie whispered, “Can they get up here?”

“I don’t see how,” Levine whispered. “We’re almost twenty feet above the ground. I think we’ll be fine.”

“But you said they can climb trees.”

“Ssssh. This isn’t a tree. Now, everybody down, and quiet.”

* * *

Malcolm winced in pain as Thorne stretched him out on a table in the second trailer. “I don’t seem to have much luck on these expeditions, do I?”

“No, you don’t,” Sarah said. “Just take it easy, Ian.” Thorne held a flashlight while she cut away Malcolm’s trouser. He had a deep gash on his right leg, and he had lost a lot of blood. She said, “We have a medical kit?”

Thorne said, “I think there’s one outside, where we store the bike.”

“Get it.”

Thorne went outside to get it. Malcolm and Harding were alone in the trailer. She shone the light into the wound, peering closely. Malcolm said, “How bad is it?”

“It could be worse,” she said lightly. “You’ll survive.” In fact, the wound cut deep, almost to the bone. Somehow it had missed the artery; that was lucky. But the gash was filthy—she saw grease and bits of leaves mashed into the ragged red muscle. She’d have to clean it out, but she’d wait for the morphine to take effect first.

“Sarah,” Malcolm said, “I owe you my life.”

“Never mind, Ian.”

“No, no, I do.”

“Ian,” she said, looking at him. “This sincerity is not like you.”

“It’ll pass,” he said, and smiled a little. She knew he must be in pain. Thorne returned with the medical kit, and she filled the syringe, tapped out the bubbles, and injected it into Malcolm’s shoulder.

He grunted. “Ow. How much did you give me?”

“A lot.”

“Why?”

“Because I have to clean the wound out, Ian. And you’re not going to like it when I do.”

Malcolm sighed. He turned to Thorne. “It’s always something, isn’t it? Go on, Sarah, do your damnedest.”

* * *

Levine watched the approaching raptors through the night glasses. They moved in a loose group, with their characteristic hopping gait. He watched, hoping to see some organization in the pack, some structure, some sign of a dominance hierarchy. Velociraptors were intelligent and it made sense that they would organize themselves hierarchically, and that this would appear in their spatial configuration. But he could see nothing. They were like a band of marauders, shapeless, hissing and snapping at one another.

Near Levine in the high hide, Eddie and the kids were crouched down. Eddie had his arms around the kids, comforting them. The boy especially was panicky. The girl seemed to be okay. She was calmer.

Levine didn’t understand why anyone was afraid. They were perfectly secure, high up here. He watched the approaching pack with academic detachment, trying to discern a pattern in their rapid movements.

There was no doubt they were following the game trail. Their path exactly matched the paras earlier in the day: up from the river, then over the slight rise, and along the back of the high hide. The raptors paid no attention to the hide itself. They seemed mostly to interact with each other.

The animals came around the side of the structure, and were about to continue on, when the nearest animal paused. It fell behind the rest of the pack, sniffing the air. Then it bent over, and began to poke its snout through the grass around the bottom of the hide.

What was it doing? Levine wondered.

The solitary raptor growled. It continued to root in the grass. And then it came up with something in its hand, something it held in its clawed fingers. Levine squinted, trying to see it.

It was a piece of wrapping paper from a candy bar.

The raptor looked up at the high hide, its eyes glowing. It stared right at Levine. And it snarled.

Malcolm

“You feel okay?” Thorne said.

“Better all the time,” Malcolm said. He sighed. His body relaxed. “You know, there’s a reason why people like morphine,” he said.

Sarah Harding adjusted the inflatable plastic splint around Malcolm’s leg. She said to Thorne, “How long until the helicopter comes?”

Thorne glanced at his watch. “Less than five hours. Dawn tomorrow.”

“For sure?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

Harding nodded. “Okay. He’ll be okay.”

“I’m fine,” Malcolm said, in a dreamy voice. “I’m just sad that the experiment is over. And it was such a good experiment, too. So elegant. So unique. Darwin never knew.”

Harding said to Thorne, “I’m going to clean this out now. Hold his leg for me.” More loudly, she said, “What didn’t Darwin know, Ian?”

“That life is a complex system,” he said, “and everything that goes along with that. Fitness landscapes. Adaptive walks. Boolean nets. Self-organizing behavior. Poor man. Ouch! What are you doing there?”

“Just tell us,” Harding said, bent over the wound. “Darwin had no idea …”

“That life is so unbelievably complex,” Malcolm said. “Nobody realizes it. I mean, a single fertilized egg has a hundred thousand genes, which act in a coordinated way, switching on and off at specific times, to transform that single cell into a complete living creature. That one cell starts to divide, but the subsequent cells are different. They specialize. Some are nerve. Some are gut. Some are limb. Each set of cells begins to follow its own program, developing, interacting. Eventually there are two hundred and fifty different kinds of cells, all developing together, at exactly the right time. Just when the organism needs a circulatory system, the heart starts pumping. Just when hormones are needed, the adrenals start to make them. Week after week, this unimaginably complex development proceeds perfectly—perfectly. It’s incredible. No human activity comes close.

“I mean, you ever build a house? A house is simple in comparison. But even so, workmen build the stairs wrong, they put the sink in backward, the tile man doesn’t show up when he’s supposed to. All kinds of things go wrong. And yet the fly that lands on the workman’s lunch is perfect. Ow! Take it easy.”

“Sorry,” she said, continuing to clean his wound.

“But the point,” Malcolm said, “is that this intricate developmental process in the cell is something we can barely describe, let alone understand. Do you realize the limits of our understanding? Mathematically, we can describe two things interacting, like two planets in space. Three things interacting—three planets in space—well, that becomes a problem. Four or five things interacting, we can’t really do it. And inside the cell, there’s one hundred thousand things interacting. You have to throw up your hands. It’s so complex—how is it even possible that life ever happens at all? Some people think the answer is that living forms organize themselves. Life creates its own order, the way crystallization creates order. Some people think life crystallizes into being, and that’s how the complexity is managed.

“Because, if you didn’t know any physical chemistry, you could look at a crystal and ask all the same questions. You’d see those beautiful spars, those perfect geometric facets, and you could ask, What’s controlling this process? How does the crystal end up so perfectly formed—and looking so much like other crystals? But it turns out a crystal is just the way molecular forces arrange themselves in solid form. No one controls it. It happens on its own. To ask a lot of questions about a crystal means you don’t understand the fundamental nature of the processes that led to its creation.

“So maybe living forms are a kind of crystallization. Maybe life just happens. And maybe, like crystals, there’s a characteristic order to living things that is generated by their interacting elements. Okay. Well, one of the things that crystals teach us is that order can arise very fast. One minute you have a liquid, with all the molecules moving randomly. The next minute, a crystal forms, and all the molecules are locked in order. Right?”

“Right …”

“Okay. Now. Think of the interaction of life forms on the planet to make an ecosystem. That’s even more complex than a single animal. All the arrangements are very complicated. Like the yucca plant. You know about that?”

“Tell me.”

“The yucca plant depends on a particular moth which gathers pollen into a ball, and carries the ball to a different plant—not a different flower on the same plant—where it rubs the ball on the plant, fertilizing it. Only then does the moth lay its eggs. The yucca plant can’t survive without the moth. The moth can’t survive without the plant. Complex interactions like that make you think maybe behavior is a kind of crystallization, too.”

“You’re speaking metaphorically?” Harding said.

“I’m talking about all the order in the natural world,” Malcolm said. “And how perhaps it can emerge fast, through crystallization. Because complex animals can evolve their behavior rapidly. Changes can occur very quickly. Human beings are transforming the planet, and nobody knows whether it’s a dangerous development or not. So these behavioral processes can happen faster than we usually think evolution occurs. In ten thousand years human beings have gone from hunting to farming to cities to cyberspace. Behavior is screaming forward, and it might be nonadaptive. Nobody knows. Although personally, I think cyberspace means the end of our species.”

“Yes? Why is that?”

“Because it means the end of innovation,” Malcolm said. “This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they’ll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big continent, and their evolution slows down. Now, for our own species, evolution occurs mostly through our behavior. We innovate new behavior to adapt. And everybody on earth knows that innovation only occurs in small groups. Put three people on a committee and they may get something done. Ten people, and it gets harder. Thirty people, and nothing happens. Thirty million, it becomes impossible. That’s the effect of mass media—it keeps anything from happening. Mass media swamps diversity. It makes every place the same. Bangkok or Tokyo or London: there’s a McDonald’s on one corner, a Benetton on another, a Gap across the street. Regional differences vanish. All differences vanish. In a mass-media world, there’s less of everything except the top ten books, records, movies, ideas. People worry about losing species diversity in the rain forest. But what about intellectual diversity—our most necessary resource? That’s disappearing faster than trees. But we haven’t figured that out, so now we’re planning to put five billion people together in cyberspace. And it’ll freeze the entire species. Everything will stop dead in its tracks. Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. Global uniformity. Oh, that hurts. Are you done?”

“Almost,” Harding said. “Hang on.”

“And believe me, it’ll be fast. If you map complex systems on a fitness landscape, you find the behavior can move so fast that fitness can drop precipitously. It doesn’t require asteroids or diseases or anything else. It’s just behavior that suddenly emerges, and turns out to be fatal to the creatures that do it. My idea was that dinosaurs—being complex creatures—might have undergone some of these behavioral changes. And that led to their extinction.”

“What, all of them?”

“It just takes a few,” Malcolm said. “Some dinosaur roots in the swamps around the inland sea, changes the water circulation, and destroys the plant ecology that twenty other species depend on. Bang! They’re gone. That causes still more dislocations. A predator dies off, and its prey grow unchecked. The ecosystem becomes unbalanced. More things go wrong. More species die. And suddenly it’s over. It could have happened that way.”

“Just behavior …”

“Yes,” Malcolm said. “Anyway, that was the idea. And I had this nice thought that we might prove it.… But now it’s finished. We have to get out of here. You better tell the others.”

Thorne clicked on the radio. “Eddie? It’s Doc.”

There was no answer.

“Eddie?”

The radio crackled. And then they heard a noise that at first sounded like static. It was a moment before they realized it was a high-pitched human scream.

The High Hide

The first of the raptors hissed as it began jumping up, clattering against the high hide, shaking the structure. Its claws raked against the metal, and it fell down again. Eddie was astonished at how high it jumped—the animal could leap eight feet straight up, again and again, without apparent effort. Its jumps attracted the other animals, which slowly came back to circle the hide.

Soon the hide was surrounded by leaping, snarling raptors. It swayed back and forth as the animals slammed into it, clawed for purchase, and fell back again. But more ominously, Levine saw, they were learning. Already, some of them had begun to use their clawed forearms to grip the structure, holding on while their legs got footing. One of the raptors came within a few feet of their little shelter before finally falling back. The falls never seemed to hurt the animals. They immediately leapt up, and jumped again.

Eddie and the kids scrambled to their feet. Levine said, “Get back! Don’t look out,” and he pushed the kids into the center of the shelter.

Eddie was bent over his knapsack, and held up an incandescent flare. He popped it and flung it over the side; two of the raptors fell away. The flare sputtered on the wet ground, casting harsh red shadows. But the raptors kept coming. Eddie pulled up one of the aluminum bars from the floor, leaned over the side railing brandishing the bar like a club.

One of the raptors had already climbed high enough to dart forward, jaws gaping, at Eddie’s neck. Surprised, Eddie shouted and jerked his head back; the raptor narrowly missed him, but its jaws closed on his shirt. Then the raptor fell back, jaws clenched tight, and its weight pulled Eddie forward over the railing.

He yelled “Help me! Help!” as he started to topple over the side; Levine threw his arms around him, dragging him back. Levine looked past Eddie’s shoulder at the raptor, which was now dangling in space, hissing furiously, still gripping the shirt. Eddie pounded the raptor on the snout with his bar. But the raptor held on like a bulldog. Eddie was bent precariously over the railing; he might fall at any moment.

He jabbed the bar into the animal’s eye, and abruptly the raptor released its grip. The two men fell back into the shelter. When they got to their feet, they saw raptors climbing up the sides of the hide. As they appeared at the rail, Eddie swung at them with the strut, knocking them back.

“Quick!” he shouted to the kids. “Up on the roof! Quick!” Kelly started climbing one of the struts, then pushed herself easily up onto the roof. Arby stood there, his expression blank. She looked back down and said, “Come on, Arb!”

The boy was frozen, his eyes wide with fear. Levine ran to help him, lifted him up. Eddie was swinging the strut in wide arcs, the metal smacking against the raptors.

One of the raptors caught the strut in its jaws and jerked it hard. Eddie lost his balance, twisted, and fell backward, toppling over the side. He cried “Nooo!” as he fell. Immediately all the animals dropped down to the ground. They heard Eddie screaming in the night. The raptors snarled.

Levine was terrified. He was still holding Arby in his arms, pushing him up to the roof. “Go on,” he kept saying. “Go on. Go on.”

From the roof, Kelly was saying, “You can do it, Arb.”

The boy gripped the roof, pulling himself up, his legs churning in panic. He kicked Levine hard in the mouth and Levine dropped him. He saw the boy slide away, and drop backward to the ground.

“Oh Christ,” Levine said. “Oh Christ.”

Thorne was underneath the trailer, unhooking the cable. He released it, crawled out, and sprinted for the Jeep. He heard the whirr of a motor and saw that Sarah had gotten onto the motorbike, and was already racing off, a Lindstradt rifle slung across her shoulder.

He got behind the wheel, turned on the engine, and waited impatiently while the cable winched in, the hook sliding across the grass. It seemed to take forever. Now the cable was snaking around the tree. He waited. He looked over and saw the light from Sarah’s bike moving off through the foliage, heading down toward the high hide.

At last the winch motor stopped. Thorne threw the car in gear, and roared away from the clearing. The radio clicked. “Ian,” he said.

“Don’t worry about me,” Malcolm said, in a dreamy voice. “I’m just fine.”

Kelly was lying flat on the angled roof of the shed, looking down over the side. She saw Arby hit the ground, on the other side of the structure from Eddie. He seemed to hit hard. But she didn’t know what happened to him, because she had turned away to grip the wet roof, and when she looked back down again, Arby was gone.

Gone.

Sarah Harding drove fast on the muddy jungle road. She wasn’t sure where she was, but she thought by following the terrain downward she would eventually come out onto the plain. At least that was her hope.

She accelerated, came around a curve, and suddenly saw a big tree blocking the road. She braked to a stop, spun the bike around, and headed back again. Farther up the road, she saw Thorne’s twin headlights, turning off to the right. She followed his Jeep, racing her engine in the night.

Levine stood in the center of the high hide, frozen with terror. The raptors were no longer jumping, no longer trying to climb the structure. He heard them down on the ground, snarling. He heard the sharp crunch of bones. The boy had never made a sound.

Cold sweat broke out all over his body.

Then he heard Arby shout, “Back! Get back!”

Up on the roof, Kelly twisted around, trying to see down on the other side. In the dying light of the flare, she saw that Arby was inside the cage. He had managed to close the door, and was reaching his hand back through the bars, to turn the key in the lock. There were three raptors near him; they leapt forward when they saw his hand, and he pulled it back quickly. He shouted, “Get back!” The raptors began to bite the cage, turning their heads sideways to gnaw the bars. One of the animals got its lower jaw tangled up in the looped elastic band that hung from the key. The raptor pulled its head away, stretching the elastic, and suddenly the key snapped out of the lock, smacking against its neck.

The raptor squealed in surprise and stepped backward. The elastic was now looped tight around the lower jaw, the key glinting in the light. The raptor scratched at it with its forearms, trying to pull the elastic loop off, but it was caught around the curved back teeth, and the animal’s efforts just made the elastic snap on the skin. Soon it gave up, and began rubbing its snout in the dirt, trying to get the key off.

Meanwhile the other raptors managed to pull the cage free from the superstructure, and knock it over onto the ground. They ducked their heads, slashing Arby behind the bars. When they realized that wouldn’t work, they kicked and stomped the cage repeatedly. More animals joined them. Soon seven raptors were clustered over the cage. They kicked it and it rolled away from the hide. Their bodies blocked her view of Arby.

She heard a faint sound, and looked up to see two headlights in the distance. It was a car.

Someone was coming.

Arby was in hell. Inside the cage, he was surrounded by black snarling shapes. The raptors couldn’t get their jaws through the spaces in the bars, but their hot saliva dripped down on him, and when they kicked their claws came through, slashing his arms and shoulders as he rolled. His body was bruised. His head hurt from banging against the bars. His world was swirling, terrifying pandemonium. He knew only one thing with certainty.

The raptors were rolling him away from the hide.

* * *

As the car came closer, Levine went to the railing and looked down. In the light of the red flare, he saw three raptors dragging what remained of Eddie’s body toward the jungle. They paused frequently to fight over it, snapping at each other, but they still managed to haul it away.

Then he saw that another group of raptors were kicking and pushing the cage. They rolled it down the game trail, and into the forest.

Now he could hear the rumble of the Jeep engine, as the car came closer. He saw Thorne’s silhouette behind the wheel.

He hoped he had a gun. Levine wanted to kill every one of these damned animals. He wanted to kill them all.

Up on the roof, Kelly watched the raptors kicking the cage, rolling it away. One raptor remained behind, turning around and around in circles, like a frustrated dog. Then she saw it was the raptor that had caught its jaw in the elastic loop. The key still dangled along its cheek, glinting in the red light. The raptor jerked its head up and down, trying to get free.

The Jeep came roaring forward, and the raptor seemed confused by the sudden bright lights. Thorne accelerated, trying to hit it with his car. The raptor turned and ran off, out into the plain.

Kelly scrambled off the roof, and headed down.

Thorne threw open the door as Levine jumped into the car. “They got the kid,” Levine said, pointing along the trail.

Kelly was still coming down, shouting, “Wait!”

Thorne said, “Get back up there. Sarah’s coming! We’ll get Arby!”

“But—”

“We can’t lose them!” Thorne gunned the engine, and started to drive down the game trail, chasing the raptors.

In the trailer, Ian Malcolm listened to the voices shouting over the radio. He heard the panic, the confusion.

Black noise, he thought. Everything going to hell at once.

A hundred thousand things interacting.

He sighed, and closed his eyes.

Thorne drove fast. The jungle was dense around them. The trail ahead began to narrow, the big palms edging closer, slapping the car. He said, “Can we make it?”

“It’s wide enough,” Levine said. “I walked it earlier today. Paras use this trail.”

“How could this happen?” Thorne said. “The cage was attached to the scaffolding.”

“I don’t know,” Levine said. “It broke off.”

“How? How?”

“I didn’t see. A lot happened.”

“And Eddie?” Thorne said grimly.

“It was fast,” Levine said.

The Jeep plunged through the jungle, bouncing hard as it followed the game trail; they banged their heads on the cloth roof. Thorne drove recklessly. Up ahead, the raptors were moving fast; he could hardly see the last of the animals, sprinting in the darkness up ahead.

“They wouldn’t listen to me!” Kelly shouted, as Sarah pulled up on the motorcycle.

“About what?”

“The raptor took the key! Arby’s locked in the cage and the raptor took the key!”

“Where?” Sarah said.

“There!” she said, pointing across the plain. In the moonlight they could just see the dark shape of the fleeing raptor. “We need the key!”

“Get on,” Sarah said, unshouldering her rifle. Kelly climbed behind her on the bike. Sarah thrust the gun into her hands. “Can you shoot?”

“No. I mean, I never—”

“Can you drive a bike?”

“No, I—”

“Then you have to shoot,” Sarah said. “Now, look: trigger’s here. Okay? Safety’s here. Twist it like this. Okay? It’ll be a rough ride, so don’t release it until we get close.”

“Close to what?”

But Sarah didn’t hear her. She gunned the engine, and the bike accelerated, heading out into the plain, chasing the fleeing raptor. Kelly put one arm around Sarah, and tried to hold on.

The Jeep bounced along the jungle trail, splashing through muddy pools. “I don’t remember it this rough,” Levine said, clutching the armhold. “Maybe you should slow down—”

“Hell no,” Thorne said. “If we lose sight of him, it’s over. We don’t know where the raptor nest is. And in this jungle, at night … Ah, hell.”

Up ahead, the raptors were leaving the trail, running off into the underbrush. The cage was gone. Thorne could not see the terrain very well, but it looked like a sheer hill, going almost straight down.

“You can’t do it,” Levine said. “It’s too steep.”

“I have to do it,” Thorne said.

“Don’t be crazy,” Levine said. “Face facts. We’ve lost the kid, Doc. It’s too bad, but we’ve lost him.”

Thorne glared at Levine. “He didn’t give up on you,” he said. “And we’re not giving up on him.”

Thorne spun the wheel and drove the Jeep over the edge. The car nosed down sickeningly, gained speed, and began a steep descent.

“Shit!” Levine yelled. “You’ll kill us all!”

“Hang on!”

Bouncing, they plunged downward into darkness.

SIXTH CONFIGURATION

“Order collapses in simultaneous regions. Survival is now unlikely for individuals and groups.”

IAN MALCOLM

Chase

The motorcycle raced forward across the grassy plain. Kelly clutched Sarah with one hand, and held the rifle with the other; the rifle was heavy; her arm was getting tired. The motorcycle jolted over the terrain. The wind blew her hair around her face.

“Hold on!” Sarah shouted.

The moon broke through the clouds, and the grass before them was silver in the moonlight. The raptor was forty yards ahead of them, the animal just within range of their headlamp. They were gaining steadily. Kelly saw no other animals on the plain, except for the apatosaur herd in the far distance.

They came closer to the raptor. The animal ran swiftly, its tail stiff, barely visible above the grass. Sarah angled the bike to the right, as they came alongside the raptor. They moved steadily closer. She leaned back, her mouth close to Kelly’s ear.

“Get ready!” she shouted.

“What do I do?”

They were running parallel to the raptor, back by its tail. Sarah accelerated, passing the legs, moving toward the head.

“The neck!” she shouted. “Shoot it in the neck!”

“Where?”

“Anywhere! The neck!”

Kelly fumbled with the gun. “Now?”

“No! Wait! Wait!”

The raptor panicked as the motorcycle approached. It increased its speed.

Kelly was trying to find the safety. The gun was bouncing. Everything was bouncing. Her fingers touched the safety, slid off. She reached again. She was going to have to use two hands, and that meant letting go of Sarah—

“Get ready!” Sarah shouted.

“But I can’t—”

“Now! Do it! Now!”

Sarah swerved the bike, coming alongside the raptor. They were now just three feet away. Kelly could smell the animal. It turned its head and snapped at them. Kelly fired. The gun bucked in her hands; she grabbed Sarah again. The raptor kept running.

“What happened?”

“You missed!”

Kelly shook her head. “Never mind!” Sarah shouted. “You can do it! I’ll get closer!”

She angled the bike toward the raptor again, moving closer. But this time was different: as they came alongside, the raptor abruptly charged them, butting at them with its head. Sarah howled and twisted the bike away, widening the gap. “Smart bastards, aren’t they!” she shouted. “No second chances!”

The raptor chased them for a moment, then suddenly turned, changing direction, racing away across the plains.

“It’s going for the river!” Kelly shouted.

Sarah gunned the engine. The bike shot forward. “How deep?”

Kelly didn’t answer.

“How deep!”

“I don’t know!” Kelly shouted. She was trying to remember how the raptors looked when they crossed the river. She seemed to remember they were swimming. That meant it must be at least—

“More than three feet?” Sarah said.

“Yes!”

“No good!”

They were now ten yards behind the raptor, and losing ground. The animal had entered an area marked with thick Benettitalean cycads. The rough trunks scratched at them. The terrain was uneven; the bike bounced and jolted over the bumps. “Can’t see!” Sarah shouted. “Hold on!” She angled left, moving away from the raptor, heading for the river. The animal was disappearing in the grass.

“What’re you doing?” Kelly shouted.

“We have to cut him off!”

Shrieking, a flock of startled birds rose up in front of them. Sarah drove through flapping wings, and Kelly ducked her head. The rifle thunked in her hand.

“Careful!” Sarah shouted.

“What happened?”

“It went off!”

“How many shots do I have?”

“Two more! Make ’em good!”

The river was up ahead, shimmering in the moonlight. They burst out of the grass and came onto the muddy bank. Sarah turned, the motorcycle swerved, slipped, and the bike shot away. Kelly fell, hitting the cold mud, Sarah landing hard on top of her. Immediately Sarah jumped up, running for the bike, shouting, “Come on!”

Dazed, Kelly followed her. The rifle in her hands was thick with mud. She wondered if it would still work. Sarah was already on the bike, gunning the engine, waving her forward. Kelly jumped on, and Sarah headed up the riverbank.

The raptor was twenty yards ahead of them. Approaching the water. “It’s getting away!”

Thorne’s Jeep crashed down the hillside, out of control. Palms slapped against the windshield; they could see nothing at all, but they felt the steepness of the incline. The Jeep fished sideways. Levine yelled.

Thorne gripped the steering wheel, tried to turn the car back. He touched the brake; the Jeep straightened and continued down the hill. There was a gap in the palms—he saw a field of black boulders looming directly ahead. The raptors were scrambling over the boulders. But maybe if he went left—

“No!” Levine shouted. “No!”

“Hang on!” Thorne yelled, and he twisted the wheel. The car lost traction and slid downward. They hit the first of the boulders, shattering a headlight. The car swung up at an angle, crashed down again. Thorne thought that had finished the transmission but somehow the car was still going, angling down the hillside, moving off to the left. The second headlight smashed on a tree branch. They continued down in darkness, through another layer of palms, and then abruptly they banged down on level ground.

The Jeep tires rolled across soft earth.

Thorne brought the car to a stop.

Silence.

They peered out the windows, trying to see where they were. But it was so dark, it was hard to see anything. They seemed to be at the bottom of a deep gully, a canopy of trees overhead.

“Alluvial contours,” Levine said. “We must be in a streambed.”

As his eyes adjusted, Thorne saw he was right. The raptors were running down the center of the streambed, which was lined with big boulders on both sides. But the bed itself was sandy, and it was wide enough for the car to pass through. He followed them.

“You have any idea where we are?” Levine said, staring at the raptors.

“No,” Thorne said.

The car drove forward. The streambed widened, opening out into a flat basin. The boulders disappeared; there were trees on both sides of the river. Patches of moonlight appeared here and there. It was easier to see.

But the raptors were gone. He stopped the car, rolled down the window, and listened. He could hear them hissing and growling. The sound seemed to be coming from off to the left.

Thorne put the car in gear, and left the streambed, moving off among ferns and occasional pine trees. Levine said, “Do you suppose the boy survived that hill?”

“I don’t know,” Thorne said. “I can’t imagine.”

He drove forward slowly. They came to a break in the trees, and saw a clearing where the ferns had been trampled flat. Beyond the clearing, they saw the banks of the river, moonlight glinting on the water. Somehow they had returned to the river.

But it was the clearing itself that held their attention. Within the broad open space, they saw the huge pale skeletons of several apatosaurs. The giant rib cages, arcs of pale bone, shone in the silver light. The dark hulk of a partially eaten carcass lay on its side in the center, clouds of flies buzzing above it in the night.

“What is this place?” Thorne said. “It looks like a graveyard.”

“Yes,” Levine said. “But it’s not.”

The raptors were all clustered to one side, fighting over the remains of Eddie’s carcass. At the opposite side of the clearing they saw three low mud mounds; the walls were broken in many places. Within the nests they saw crushed fragments of eggshells. There was the strong stench of decay.

Levine leaned forward, staring. “This is the raptor nest,” he said.

In the darkness of the trailer, Malcolm sat up, wincing. He grabbed the radio. “You found it? The nest?”

The radio crackled. Levine said, “Yes. I think so.”

“Describe it,” Malcolm said.

Levine spoke quietly, reporting features, estimating dimensions. To Levine, the velociraptor nest appeared slovenly, uncared for, ill-made. He was surprised, because dinosaur nests usually conveyed an unmistakable sense of order. Levine had seen it time and again, in fossil sites from Montana to Mongolia. The eggs in the nest were arranged in neat concentric circles. Often there were more than thirty eggs in a single nest, suggesting that many females cooperated to share a single mud mound. Numerous adult fossils would be found nearby, indicating that the dinosaurs cared communally for the eggs. At a few excavations, it was even possible to get a sense of the spatial arrangement, with the nests in the center, the adults moving carefully around the outside, so as not to disturb the incubating eggs. In this rigid structure, the dinosaurs were reminiscent of their descendants the birds, which also displayed precise courtship, mating, and nest-building patterns.

But the velociraptors behaved differently. There was a disorderly, chaotic feeling to the scene before him: ill-formed nests; quarreling adults; very few young and juvenile animals; the eggshells crushed; the broken mounds stepped on. Around the mounds, Levine now saw scattered small bones which he presumed were the remains of newborns. He saw no living infants anywhere in the clearing. There were three juveniles, but these younger animals were forced to fend for themselves, and they already showed many scars on their bodies. The youngsters looked thin, undernourished. Poking around the periphery of the carcass, they were cautious, backing away whenever one of the adults snapped at them.

“And what about the apatosaurs?” Malcolm asked. “What about the carcasses?”

Levine counted four, all together. In various stages of decomposition.

“You have to tell Sarah,” Malcolm said.

But Levine was wondering about something else: he was wondering how these big carcasses had gotten here in the first place. They hadn’t died here by accident, surely all animals would have avoided this nest. They couldn’t have been lured here, and they were too large to carry. So how did they get here? Something was tickling the back of his mind, some obvious thought that he wasn’t—

“They brought Arby,” Malcolm said.

“Yes,” Levine said. “They did.”

He stared at the nest, trying to figure it out. Then Thorne nudged him. “There’s the cage,” he said, pointing. At the far side of the clearing, lying on the ground, partially hidden behind fronds, Levine saw the glint of aluminum struts. But he couldn’t see Arby.

“Way over there,” Levine said.

The raptors were ignoring the cage, still fighting over Eddie’s carcass. Thorne brought out a Lindstradt rifle, snapped open the cartridge pack. He saw six darts. “Not enough,” he said, and snapped it shut. There were at least ten raptors in the clearing.

Levine rummaged in the back seat, found his knapsack, which had fallen to the floor. He unzipped it, came out with a small silver cylinder the size of a large soft-drink bottle. It had a skull and crossbones stenciled on it. Beneath, lettering read: CAUTION TOXIC METACHOLINE (MIVACURIUM).

“What’s that?” Thorne said.

“Something they cooked up in Los Alamos,” Levine said. “It’s a nonlethal area neutralizer. Releases a short-acting cholinesterase aerosol. Paralyzes all life forms for up to three minutes. It’ll knock all the raptors out.”

“But what about the boy?” Thorne said. “You can’t use that. You’ll paralyze him.”

Levine pointed. “If we throw the canister to the right of the cage, the gas’ll blow away from him, toward the raptors.”

“Or it may not,” Thorne said. “And he may be badly injured.”

Levine nodded. He put the cylinder back in the knapsack, then sat, facing forward, staring at the raptors. “So,” Levine said. “What do we do now?”

Thorne looked over at the aluminum cage, partially blocked by ferns. Then he saw something that made him sit up: the cage moved slightly, the bars shifting in the moonlight.

“Did you see that?” Levine said.

Thorne said, “I’m going to get that kid out of there.”

“But how?” Levine said.

“The old-fashioned way,” Thorne said.

He climbed out of the car.

* * *

Sarah accelerated, racing the motorcycle up the mud banks of the river. The raptor was just ahead, cutting diagonally toward them, heading for the water.

“Go!” Kelly shouted. “Go!”

The raptor saw them and changed course, angling farther ahead. It was trying to get distance on them but they were moving faster on the open banks. They came abreast of the animal, flanking it, and then Sarah left the banks, heading back onto the grassy plain. The raptor moved right, deeper into the plain. Away from the river.

“You did it!” Kelly shouted.

Sarah maintained her speed, moving slowly closer to the raptor. It seemed to have given up on the river, and now had no plan. It was just running up the plain. And they were steadily, inexorably gaining. Kelly was excited. She tried to wipe the mud off her rifle, preparing to shoot again.

“Damn!” Sarah shouted.

“What?”

“Look!”

Kelly leaned forward, stared past Sarah’s shoulder. Directly ahead, she saw the herd of apatosaurs. They were only fifty yards from the first of the enormous animals, which bellowed and wheeled in sudden fear. Their bodies were green-gray in the moonlight.

The raptor streaked directly toward the herd.

“It thinks it’s going to lose us!” Sarah gunned the bike, moving closer. “Get it now! Now!”

Kelly aimed and fired. The gun bucked. But the raptor kept going.

“Missed!”

Up ahead, the apatosaurs were turning, their big legs stomping the ground. Their heavy tails whipped through the air. But they were too slow to move away. The raptor raced forward, heading directly beneath the big apatosaurs.

“What do we do?” Kelly shouted.

“No choice!” Sarah yelled. She pulled parallel to the raptor just as they passed into shadow, racing beneath the first animal. Kelly glimpsed the curve of the belly, hanging three feet above her. The legs were as thick as tree trunks, stamping and turning.

The raptor ran on, darting among the moving legs. Sarah swerved, followed. Above them, the animals roared and turned, and roared again. They were beneath another belly, then out into moonlight, then in shadow again. Now they were in the middle of the herd. It was like being in a forest of moving trees.

Directly ahead, a big leg came down with a slam! that shook the ground. The bike bounced as Sarah swung left; they scraped against the animal’s flesh. “Hang on!” she shouted, and swerved again, following the raptor. Above them, the apatosaurs were bellowing and moving. The raptor dodged and turned, and then broke clear, racing out the back of the herd.

“Shit!” Sarah said, spinning the bike around. A whiptail swung low, narrowly missing them, and then they too were free, chasing the raptor again.

The motorcycle raced across the grassy plain.

“Last chance!” Sarah shouted. “Do it!”

Kelly raised the rifle. Sarah was driving hard and fast, pulling very close to the running raptor. The animal turned to butt her, but she held her position, punched it hard in the head with her fist. “Now!”

Kelly shoved the barrel against the flesh of the neck, and squeezed the trigger. The gun snapped back hard, jolting her in the stomach.

The raptor ran on.

“No!” she shouted. “No!”

And then suddenly the raptor fell, tumbling end over end in the grass, and Sarah swung the bike away and pulled to a stop. The raptor was five yards away, flopping in the grass. It snarled and yelped. Then it was silent.

Sarah took the rifle, snapped open the cartridge pack. Kelly saw five more darts.

“I thought that was the last one,” she said.

“I lied,” Sarah said. “Wait here.”

Kelly stayed by the bike while Sarah moved cautiously forward through the grass. Sarah fired one more shot, then stood waiting for a few moments. Then she bent down.

When she came back, she was holding the key in her hand.

In the nest, the raptors were still tearing at the carcass, off to one side. But the intensity of the behavior was diminishing: some of the animals were turning away, rubbing their jaws with their clawed hands, drifting slowly toward the center of the clearing.

Moving closer to the cage.

Thorne climbed into the back of the Jeep, pushing aside the canvas cover. He checked the rifle in his hands.

Levine slid into the driver’s seat. He started the engine. Thorne steadied himself in the back of the Jeep, gripped the rear bar. He turned to Levine.

“Go!”

The Jeep raced forward across the clearing. By the carcass, the raptors looked up in surprise as they saw the intruder. By then the Jeep was past the center of the clearing, driving past the enormous dead skeletons, the broad ribs high over their heads, and then Levine was swinging the car left, pulling alongside the aluminum cage. Thorne jumped out, and grabbed the cage in both hands. In the darkness he couldn’t tell how badly Arby was hurt; the boy was turned face down. Levine climbed out of the car; Thorne yelled for him to get back in, as he lifted the cage high and swung it onto the back of the Jeep. Thorne jumped into the back, next to the cage, and Levine shoved the car in gear. Behind them, the raptors snarled and raced forward in pursuit, running among the skeletal ribs. They crossed the clearing with stunning speed.

As Levine stepped on the gas, the nearest raptor leapt high, landing up on the back of the car, and grabbing the canvas tarp in its teeth. The animal hissed and held on.

Levine accelerated, and the Jeep bounced out of the clearing.

* * *

In darkness, Malcolm sank back into morphine dreams. Images floated in front of his eyes: fitness landscapes, the multicolored computer images now employed to think about evolution. In this mathematical world of peaks and valleys, populations of organisms were seen to climb the fitness peaks, or slide down into the valleys of nonadaptation. Stu Kauffman and his coworkers had shown that advanced organisms had complex internal constraints which made them more likely to fall off the fitness optima, and descend into the valleys. Yet, at the same time complex creatures were themselves selected by evolution. Because complex creatures were able to adapt on their own. With tools, with learning, with cooperation.

But complex animals had obtained their adaptive flexibility at some cost—they had traded one dependency for another. It was no longer necessary to change their bodies to adapt, because now their adaptation was behavior, socially determined. That behavior required learning. In a sense, among higher animals adaptive fitness was no longer transmitted to the next generation by DNA at all. It was now carried by teaching. Chimpanzees taught their young to collect termites with a stick. Such actions implied at least the rudiments of a culture, a structured social life. But animals raised in isolation, without parents, without guidance, were not fully functional. Zoo animals frequently could not care for their offspring, because they had never seen it done. They would ignore their infants, or roll over and crush them, or simply become annoyed with them and kill them.

The velociraptors were among the most intelligent dinosaurs, and the most ferocious. Both traits demanded behavioral control. Millions of years ago, in the now-vanished Cretaceous world, their behavior would have been socially determined, passed on from older to younger animals. Genes controlled the capacity to make such patterns, but not the patterns themselves. Adaptive behavior was a kind of morality; it was behavior that had evolved over many generations because it was found to succeed—behavior that allowed members of the species to cooperate, to live together, to hunt, to raise young.

But on this island, the velociraptors had been re-created in a genetics laboratory. Although their physical bodies were genetically determined, their behavior was not. These newly created raptors came into the world with no older animals to guide them, to show them proper raptor behavior. They were on their own, and that was just how they behaved—in a society without structure, without rules, without cooperation. They lived in an uncontrolled, every-creature-for-himself world where the meanest and the nastiest survived, and all the others died.

The Jeep picked up speed, bouncing hard. Thorne held on to the bars, to keep from being thrown out. Behind him, he saw the raptor swinging back and forth in the air, still clinging to the tarp. It wasn’t letting go. Levine drove back onto the flat muddy banks of the river, and turned right, following the edge of the water. The raptor hung on tenaciously.

Directly ahead, lying in the mud, Levine saw another skeleton. Another skeleton? Why were all these skeletons here? But there was no time to think—he drove forward, passing beneath the row of ribs. Without lights, he leaned forward and squinted in the moonlight, looking for obstacles ahead.

In the back of the car, the raptor scrambled up, released the tarp, clamped its jaws on the cage, and began to pull it out of the back of the Jeep. Thorne lunged, grabbed the end of the cage nearest him. The cage twisted, rolling Thorne onto his back. He found himself in a tug of war with the raptor—and the raptor was winning. Thorne locked his legs around the front passenger seat, trying to hold on. The raptor snarled; Thorne sensed the sheer fury of the animal, enraged that it might lose its prize.

“Here!” Levine shouted, holding a gun out to Thorne. Thorne was on his back, gripping the cage in both hands. He couldn’t take the gun. Levine looked back, and saw the situation. He looked in the rearview mirror. Behind them, he saw the rest of the pack still in pursuit, snarling and growling. He could not slow down. Thorne could not let go of the cage. Still driving fast, Levine swung around in the passenger seat, and aimed the rifle backward. He tried to maneuver the gun, knowing what would happen if he accidentally shot Thorne, or Arby.

“Watch it!” Thorne was shouting. “Watch it!”

Levine managed to get the safety off, and swung the barrel straight at the raptor, which was still gripping the cage bars in its jaws. The animal looked up, and in a quick movement closed its jaws over the barrel. It tugged at the gun.

Levine fired.

The raptor’s eyes popped wide as the dart slammed into the back of its throat. It made a gurgling sound, then went into convulsions, toppling backward out of the Jeep—and yanking the gun from Levine’s hands as it fell.

Thorne scrambled to his knees, and pulled the cage inside the car. He looked down inside it, but he couldn’t tell about Arby. Looking back, he saw the other raptors were still pursuing, but they were now twenty yards back, and losing ground.

On the dashboard, the radio hissed. “Doc.” Thorne recognized Sarah’s voice.

“Yes, Sarah.”

“Where are you?”

“Following the river,” Thorne said.

The storm clouds had now cleared, and it was a bright moonlit night. Behind him, the raptors still continued to chase the Jeep. But they were now falling steadily behind.

“I can’t see your lights,” Sarah said.

“Don’t have any.”

There was a pause. The radio crackled. Her voice was tense: “What about Arby.”

“We have him,” Thorne said.

“Thank God. How is he?”

“I don’t know. Alive.”

The landscape opened out. They came back into a broad valley, the grass silvery in the moonlight. Thorne looked around, trying to orient himself. Then he realized: they were back on the plain, but much farther to the south. They must still be on the same side of the river as the high hide. In that case, they ought to be able to make their way up onto the ridge road, somewhere to the left. That road would lead them back to the clearing, and the remaining trailer. And safety. He nudged Levine, pointed to the right. “Go there!”

Levine turned the car. Thorne clicked the radio. “Sarah.”

“Yes, Doc.”

“We’re going back to the trailer on the ridge road.”

“Okay,” Sarah said. “We’ll find you.”

Sarah looked back at Kelly. “Where’s the ridge road?”

“I think it’s that one up there,” Kelly said, pointing to the spine of the ridge, on the cliffs high above them.

“Okay,” Sarah said. She gunned the bike forward.

The Jeep rumbled across the plain, deep in silvery grass. They were moving fast. The raptors were no longer visible behind them. “Looks like we lost them,” Thorne said.

“Maybe,” Levine said. When he had pulled out of the streambed, he had seen several animals dart off to the left. They would now be hidden in the grass. He wasn’t sure they would give up so easily.

The Jeep was roaring toward the cliffs. Directly ahead he saw a curving switchback road, running up from the valley floor. That was the ridge road, he felt sure.

Now that the terrain was smoother, Thorne crawled back between the seats and crouched over the cage. He peered in through the bars at Arby, who was groaning softly.

Half the boy’s face was slick with blood, and his shirt was soaked. But his eyes were open, and he seemed to be moving his arms and legs.

Thorne leaned close to the bars. “Hey, son,” he said gently. “Can you hear me?”

Arby nodded, moaning.

“How you doing there?”

“Been better,” Arby said.

The Jeep ground onto the dirt road, and headed upward along the switchbacks. Levine felt a sense of relief as they moved higher, away from the valley. He was finally on the ridge road, and he was going to be safe.

He looked up, toward the crest. And then he saw the dark shapes in the moonlight, already at the top of the road, hopping up and down.

Raptors.

Waiting for him.

He pulled to a stop. “What do we do now?”

“Move over,” Thorne said grimly. “I’ll take it from here.”

At the Edge of Chaos

Thorne came up onto the ridge, and turned left, accelerating. The road stretched ahead in the moonlight, a narrow strip running between a rock wall to his left, and a sheer cliff falling away on the right. Twenty feet above him, on the ridge, he saw the raptors, leaping and snorting as they ran parallel to the Jeep.

Levine saw them too.

“What are we going to do?” he said.

Thorne shook his head. “Look in the tool kit. Look in the glove compartment. Get anything you can find.”

Levine bent over, fumbling in darkness. But Thorne knew they were in trouble. Their gun was gone. They were in a Jeep with a cloth top, and the raptors were all around them. He guessed he was probably about half a mile from the clearing, and the trailer.

Half a mile to go.

Thorne slowed as he came into the next curve, moving the car away from the plunging drop of the cliff. Rounding the curve, he saw a raptor crouched in the middle of the road, facing them, its head lowered menacingly. Thorne accelerated toward it. The raptor leapt up in the air, legs raised high. It landed on the hood of the car, claws squealing as they raked metal. It smashed against the windshield, the glass streaking spiderwebs. With the animal’s body lying against the windshield, Thorne couldn’t see anything. On this dangerous road, he slammed on the brakes.

“Hey!” Levine shouted, tumbling forward.

The raptor on the hood slid off to the side. Now Thorne could see again, and he stamped on the gas. Levine fell back again as the car moved forward. But three raptors were charging the car from the side.

One jumped onto the running board and locked its jaws on the side mirror. The animal’s glaring eye was close to Thorne’s face. He swung the wheel left, scraping the car along the rocky face of the road. Ten yards ahead a boulder protruded. He glanced at the raptor, which continued to hold on tenaciously, right to the moment when the boulder smashed into the side mirror, tearing it away. The raptor was gone.

The road widened a little. Thorne had more room to maneuver now. He felt a heavy thump, and looked up to see the canvas top sagging above his head. Claws slashed down by his ear, ripping through the canvas.

He swung the car right, then left again. The claws pulled out, but the animal was still up there, its body still indenting the cloth. Beside him, Levine produced a big hunting knife, and thrust it upward through the cloth. Immediately, another claw raked downward, slashing Levine’s hand. He yelled in pain, dropping the knife. Thorne bent over, reaching down to the floor for it.

In the rearview mirror, he saw two more raptors in the road behind him, chasing the Jeep. They were gaining on him.

But the road was broader now, and he accelerated. The raptor on the roof peered over the top, looking in through the broken windshield. Thorne held the knife in his fist and jabbed it straight up with full force, again and again. It didn’t seem to make any difference. As the road curved, he jerked the wheel right, then back, the whole Jeep tilting, and the raptor on the roof lost its grip and rolled backward off the top. It tore most of the canvas roof away as it went. The animal bounced on the ground and hit the two pursuing raptors. The impact knocked all three over the side; they fell snarling down the cliff face.

“That does it!” Levine shouted.

But a moment later, another raptor jumped down from the cliff and ran forward, only a few feet from the Jeep.

And lightly, almost easily, the raptor leapt up into the back of the Jeep.

In the passenger seat, Levine stared. The raptor was fully inside the Jeep, its head low, arms up, jaws wide, in an unmistakable attack posture. The raptor hissed at him.

Levine thought, It’s all over.

He was shocked: his entire body broke out in sweat, he felt dizzy, and he realized in a single instant there was nothing he could do, that he was moments from death. The creature hissed again, snapping its jaws, crouching to lunge—and then suddenly white foam appeared at the corners of its mouth, and its eyes rolled back. Foam bubbled out of its jaws. It began to twitch, its body going into spasms. It fell over on its side in the back of the car.

Behind them he now saw Sarah on the motorcycle, and Kelly holding the rifle. Thorne slowed, and Sarah pulled alongside them. She handed the key to Levine.

“For the cage!” she shouted.

Levine took it numbly, almost dropped it. He was in shock. Moving slowly. Dumbly. I nearly died, he thought.

“Get her gun!” Thorne said.

Levine looked off to the left, where more raptors were still racing along, parallel to the car. He counted six, but there were probably more. He tried to count again, his mind working slowly—

“Get the damned gun!”

Levine took the gun from Kelly, feeling the cold metal of the barrel in his hands.

But now the car sputtered, the engine coughing, dying, then coughing again. Jerking forward.

“What’s that?” he said, turning to Thorne.

“Trouble,” Thorne said. “We’re out of gas.”

Thorne popped the car into neutral, and it rolled forward, losing speed. Ahead was a slight rise, and beyond that, across a curve, he could see the road sloped down again. Sarah was on the motorcycle behind them, shaking her head.

Thorne realized his only hope was to make it over the rise. He said to Levine, “Unlock the cage. Get him out of there.” Levine was suddenly moving quickly, almost panicky, but crawled back, and got the key in the lock. The cage creaked open. He helped Arby out.

Thorne watched the speedometer as the needle fell. They were going twenty-five miles an hour … then twenty … then fifteen. The raptors, running alongside, began to move closer, sensing the car was in trouble.

Fifteen miles an hour. Still falling.

“He’s out,” Levine said, from the back. He clanged the cage shut.

“Push the cage off,” Thorne said. The cage rolled off the back, bouncing down the hill.

Ten miles an hour.

The car seemed to be creeping.

And then they were over the rise, moving down the other side, gaining speed again. Twelve miles an hour. Fifteen. Twenty. He careened around the curves, trying not to touch the brakes.

Levine said, “We’ll never make it to the trailer!” He was screaming at the top of his lungs, eyes wide with fear.

“I know.” Thorne could see the trailer off to the left, but separated from them by a gentle rise in the road. They could not get there. But up ahead the road forked, sloping down to the right, toward the laboratory. And if he remembered correctly, that road was all downhill.

Thorne turned right, away from the trailer.

He saw the big roof of the laboratory, a flat expanse in the moonlight. He followed the road past the laboratory, down around the back, toward the worker village. He saw the manager’s house to the right, and the convenience store, with the gas pumps in front. Was there a chance they might still have gasoline?

“Look!” Levine said, pointing behind them. “Look! Look!” Thorne glanced over his shoulder and saw that the raptors were dropping back, giving up the chase. In the vicinity of the laboratory, they seemed to hesitate.

“They’re not following us any more!” Levine shouted.

“Yeah,” Thorne said. “But where’s Sarah?”

Behind them, Sarah’s motorcycle was nowhere to be seen.

Trailer

Sarah Harding twisted the handlebars, and the motorcycle shot forward over the low rise in the road ahead. She crested and came down again, heading toward the trailer. Behind her, four raptors snarled in pursuit. She accelerated, trying to get ahead of them, to gain precious yards. Because they were going to need it.

She leaned back, and shouted to Kelly, “Okay! This has to be fast!”

“What?” Kelly shouted.

“When we get to the trailer, you jump off and run in. Don’t wait for me. Understand?”

Kelly nodded, tensely.

“Whatever happens, don’t wait for me!”

“Okay.”

Harding roared up to the trailer, braked hard. The bike skidded on the wet grass, banged into the metal siding. But Kelly was already leaping off, scrambling up toward the door, going into the trailer. Sarah had wanted to get the bike inside, but she saw the raptors were very close, too close. She pushed the bike toward them and in a single motion stepped up and threw herself through the trailer door, landing on her back on the floor. She twisted her body around and kicked the door shut with her legs, just as the first of the raptors slammed against it.

Inside the dark trailer, she held the door shut as the animals pounded it repeatedly. She felt for a lock on the door, but couldn’t find one.

“Ian. Does this door lock?”

She heard Malcolm’s voice, dreamy in the darkness. “Life is a crystal,” he said.

“Ian. Try and pay attention.”

Then Kelly was alongside her, hands moving up and down. The raptors thumped against the door. After a moment she said, “It’s down here. By the floor.” Harding heard a metallic click, and stepped away.

Kelly reached out, took her hand. The raptors were pounding and snarling outside. “It’ll be okay,” Harding said reassuringly.

She went over to Malcolm, still lying on the bed. The raptors snapped and lunged at the window near his head, their claws raking the glass. Malcolm watched them calmly. “Noisy bastards, aren’t they?” By his side, the first-aid kit was open, a syringe on the cushion. He had probably injected himself again.

Through the windows, the animals stopped throwing themselves against the glass. She heard the sound of scraping metal, from over by the door, and then saw that the raptors were dragging the motorbike away from the trailer. They were hopping up and down on it in fury. It wouldn’t be long before they punctured the tires.

“Ian,” she said. “We have to do this fast.”

“I’m in no rush,” he said calmly.

She said, “What kind of weapons have you got here?”

“Weapons … oh … I don’t know.…” He sighed. “What do you want weapons for?”

“Ian, please.”

“You’re talking so fast,” he said. “You know, Sarah, you really ought to try to relax.”

In the darkened trailer, Kelly was frightened, but she was reassured at the no-nonsense way Sarah talked about weapons. And Kelly was beginning to see that Sarah didn’t let anything stop her, she just went and did it. This whole attitude of not letting other people stop you, of believing that you could do what you wanted, was something she found herself imitating.

Kelly listened to Dr. Malcolm’s voice and knew that he would be of no help. He was on drugs and he didn’t care. And Sarah didn’t know her way around the trailer. Kelly did; she had searched the trailer earlier, looking for food. And she seemed to remember …

In the darkness, she pulled open the drawers quickly. She squinted, trying to see. She was sure she remembered one drawer, low down, had contained a pack marked with a skull and crossbones. That pack might have some kind of weapons, she thought.

She heard Sarah say, “Ian: try and think.”

And she heard Dr. Malcolm say, “Oh, I have been, Sarah. I’ve had the most wonderful thoughts. You know, all those carcasses at the raptor site present a wonderful example of—”

“Not now, Ian.”

Kelly went through the drawers, leaving them open so she would know which ones she had already checked. She moved down the trailer, and then her hand touched rough canvas. She leaned forward. Yes, this was it.

Kelly pulled out a square canvas pack that was surprisingly heavy. She said, “Sarah. Look.”

Sarah Harding took the pack to the window, where moonlight shone in. She unzipped the pack and stared at the contents. The pack was divided into padded sections. She saw three square blocks made of some substance that felt rubbery. And there was a small silver cylinder, like a small oxygen bottle. “What is all this stuff?”

“We thought it was a good idea,” Malcolm said. “But now I’m not sure it was. The thing is that—”

“What is it?” she said, interrupting. She had to keep him focused. His mind was drifting.

“Nonlethals,” Malcolm said. “Alexander’s ragtime band. We wanted to have—”

“What’s this?” she said, holding up one of the blocks in front of his face.

“Area-dispersal smoke cube. What you do is—”

“Just smoke?” she said. “It just makes smoke?”

“Yes, but—”

“What’s this?” she said, raising the silver cylinder. It had writing on it.

“Cholinesterase bomb. Releases gas. Produces short-term paralysis when it goes off. Or so they say.”

“How short?”

“A few minutes, I think, but—”

“How does it work?” she said, turning it in her hand. There was a cap at the end, with a locking pin. She started to pull it off, to get a look at the mechanism.

“Don’t!” he said. “That’s how you do it. You pull the pin and throw. Goes off in three seconds.”

“Okay,” she said. Hastily, she packed up the medical kit, throwing the syringe inside, shutting the lid.

“What are you doing?” Malcolm said, alarmed.

“We’re getting out of here,” she said, as she moved to the door.

Malcolm sighed. “It’s so nice to have a man around the house,” he said.

The cylinder sailed high through the air, tumbling in the moonlight. The raptors were about five yards away, clustered around the bike. One of the animals looked up and saw the cylinder, which landed in the grass a few yards away.

Sarah stood by the door, waiting.

Nothing happened.

No explosion.

Nothing.

“Ian! It didn’t work.”

Curious, one raptor hopped over toward where the cylinder had landed in the grass. It ducked down, and when it raised its head, it held the cylinder glinting in its jaws.

She sighed. “It didn’t work.”

“Oh, never mind,” Malcolm said calmly.

The raptor shook its head, biting into the cylinder.

“What do we do now?” Kelly said.

There was a loud explosion, and a cloud of dense white smoke blasted outward across the clearing. The raptors disappeared in the cloud.

Harding closed the door quickly.

“Now what?” Kelly said.

With Malcolm leaning on her shoulder, they moved across the clearing in the night. The gas cloud had dissipated, several minutes before. The first raptor they found in the grass was lying on its side, eyes open, absolutely motionless. But it wasn’t dead: Harding could see the steady pulse in the neck. The animal was merely paralyzed. She said to Malcolm, “How long will it last?”

“Have no idea,” Malcolm said. “Much wind?”

“There’s no wind, Ian.”

“Then it should last a bit.”

They moved forward. Now the raptors lay all around them. They stepped around the bodies, smelling the rotten odor of carnivores. One of the animals lay across the bike. She eased Malcolm down to the ground, where he sat, sighing. After a moment, he began to sing: “I wish I was in the land of cotton, old times there are not forgotten, look away …”

Harding tugged at the motorcycle handlebars, trying to pull the bike from beneath the raptor. The animal was too heavy. Kelly said, “Let me,” and reached for the handlebars. Harding went forward. Without hesitating, she bent over and put her arms around the raptor’s neck, and pulled the head upward. She felt a wave of revulsion. Hot scaly skin scraped her arms and cheek. She grunted as she leaned back, raising the animal.

“In Dixie land … duh-duh-duh-duh … to live and die in Dixie …”

She said to Kelly, “Got it?”

“Not yet,” Kelly said, pulling on the handlebars.

Harding’s face was inches from the velociraptor’s head and jaws. The head flopped back and forth as she adjusted her grip. Close to her face, the open eye stared at her, unseeing. Harding tugged, trying to lift the animal higher.

“Almost …” Kelly said.

Harding groaned, lifting.

The eye blinked.

Frightened, Harding dropped the animal. Kelly pulled the bike away. “Got it!”

“Away, away … away down south … in Dixie …”

Harding came around the raptor. Now the big leg twitched. The chest began to move.

“Let’s go,” she said. “Ian, behind me. Kelly, on the handlebars.”

“Away … away … a-way down south …”

“Let’s go,” Harding said, climbing on the bike. She kept her eyes on the raptor. The head gave a convulsive jerk. The eye blinked again. It was definitely waking up. “Let’s go, let’s go. Let’s go!”

Village

Sarah drove the motorcycle down the hill toward the worker village. Looking past Kelly, Sarah saw the Jeep parked at the store, not far from the gas pumps. She braked to a stop, and they all climbed off in the moonlight. Kelly opened the door to the store, and helped Malcolm inside. Sarah rolled the motorcycle into the store, and closed the door.

“Doc?” she said.

“We’re over here,” Thorne said. “With Arby.”

By the moonlight filtering in through the windows, she could see the store looked very much like an abandoned roadside convenience stand. There was a glass-walled refrigerator of soft drinks, the cans obscured by mold on the glass. A wire rack nearby held candy bars and Twinkies, the wrappers speckled green, crawling with larvae. In the adjacent magazine rack, the pages were curled, the headlines five years old.

To one side were rows of basic supplies: toothpaste, aspirin, suntan lotion, shampoo, combs and brushes. Alongside this were racks of clothing, tee shirts and shorts, socks, tennis rackets, bathing suits. And a few souvenirs: key chains, ashtrays, and drinking glasses.

In the center of the room was a little island with a computer cash register, a microwave, and a coffee maker. The microwave door hung wide; some animal had made a nest inside. The coffee maker was cracked, and laced with cobwebs.

“What a mess,” Malcolm said.

“Looks fine to me,” Sarah Harding said. The windows were all barred. The walls seemed solid enough. The canned goods would still be edible. She saw a sign that said “Restrooms,” so maybe there was plumbing, too. They should be safe here, at least for a while.

She helped Malcolm to lie down on the floor. Then she went over to where Thorne and Levine were working on Arby. “I brought the first-aid kit,” she said. “How is he?”

“Pretty bruised,” Thorne said. “Some gashes. But nothing broken. Head looks bad.”

“Everything hurts,” Arby said. “Even my mouth.”

“Somebody see if there’s a light,” she said. “Let me look, Arby. Okay, you’re missing a couple of teeth, that’s why. But that can be fixed. The cut on your head isn’t so bad.” She swabbed it clean with gauze, turned to Thorne. “How long until the helicopter comes?”

Thorne looked at his watch. “Two hours.”

“And where does it land?”

“The pad is several miles from here.”

Working on Arby, she nodded. “Okay. So we have two hours to get to the pad.”

Kelly said, “How can we do that? The car’s out of gas.”

“Don’t worry,” Sarah said. “We’ll figure something out. It’s going to be fine.”

“You always say that,” Kelly said.

“Because it’s always true,” Sarah said. “Okay, Arby, I need you to help now. I’m going to sit you up, and get your shirt off.…”

* * *

Thorne moved off to one side with Levine. Levine was wild-eyed, his body moving in a twitchy way. The drive in the Jeep seemed to have finished him off. “What is she talking about?” he said. “We’re trapped here. Trapped!” There was hysteria in his voice. “We can’t go anywhere. We can’t do anything. I’m telling you, we’re all going to d—”

“Keep it down,” Thorne said, grabbing his arm, leaning close. “Don’t upset the kids.”

“What difference does it make?” Levine said. “They’re going to find out sooner or—Ow! Take it easy.”

Thorne was squeezing his arm hard. He leaned close to Levine. “You’re too old to act like an asshole,” he said quietly. “Now, pull yourself together, Richard. Are you listening to me, Richard?”

Levine nodded.

“Good. Now, Richard, I’m going to go outside, and see if the pumps work.”

“They can’t possibly work,” Levine said. “Not after five years. I’m telling you, it’s a waste of—”

“Richard,” Thorne said. “We have to check the pumps.”

There was a pause. The two men looked at each other.

“You mean you’re going outside?” Levine said.

“Yes.”

Levine frowned. Another pause.

Crouched over Arby, Sarah said, “Where are the lights, guys?”

“Just a minute,” Thorne said to her. He leaned close to Levine. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Levine said, taking a breath.

Thorne went to the front door, opened it, and stepped out into darkness. Levine closed the door behind him. Thorne heard a click as the door locked.

He immediately turned, and rapped softly. Levine opened the door a few inches, peering out.

“For Christ’s sake,” Thorne whispered. “Don’t lock it!”

“But I just thought—”

“Don’t lock the damn door!”

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry.”

“For Christ’s sake,” Thorne said.

He closed the door again, and turned to face the night.

Around him, the worker village was silent. He heard only the steady drone of cicadas in the darkness. It seemed almost too quiet, he thought. But perhaps it was just the contrast from the snarling raptors. Thorne stood with his back to the door for a long time, staring out at the clearing. He saw nothing.

Finally he walked over to the Jeep, opened the side door, and fumbled in the dark for the radio. His hand touched it; it had slid under the passenger seat. He pulled it out and carried it back to the store, knocked on the door.

Levine opened it, said, “It’s not lock—”

“Here.” Thorne handed him the radio, closed the door again.

Again, he paused, watching. Around him, the compound was silent. The moon was full. The air was still.

He moved forward and peered closely at the gas pumps. The handle of the nearest one was rusted, and draped with spiderwebs. He pulled the nozzle up, and flicked the latch. Nothing happened. He squeezed the nozzle handle. No liquid came out. He tapped the glass window on the pump that showed the number of gallons, and the glass fell out in his hand. Inside, a spider scurried across the metal numerals.

There was no gas.

They had to find gas, or they’d never get to the helicopter. He frowned at the pumps, thinking. They were simple, the kind of very reliable pumps you found at a remote construction site. And that made sense, because after all, this was an island.

He paused.

This was an island. That meant everything came in by plane, or boat. Most times, probably by boat. Small boats, where supplies were offloaded by hand. Which meant …

He bent over, examining the base of the pump in the moonlight. Just as he thought, there were no buried gas tanks. He saw a thick black PVC pipe running at an angle just under the ground. He could see the direction the pipe was going—around the side of the store.

Thorne followed it, moving cautiously in the moonlight. He paused for a moment to listen, then moved on.

He came around to the side and saw just what he expected to see: fifty-gallon metal drums, ranged along the side wall. There were three of them, connected by a series of black hoses. That made sense. All the gasoline on the island would have had to come here in drums.

He tapped the drums softly with a knuckle. They were hollow. He lifted one, hoping to hear the slosh of liquid at the bottom. They needed only a gallon or two—

Nothing.

The drums were empty.

But surely, he thought, there must be more than three drums. He did a quick calculation in his head. A lab this large would have had a half-dozen support vehicles, maybe more. Even if they were fuel-efficient, they’d burn thirty or forty gallons a week. To be safe, the company would have stored at least two months’ supply, perhaps six months’ supply.

That meant ten to thirty drums. And steel drums were heavy, so they probably stored them close by. Probably just a few yards …

He turned slowly, looking. The moonlight was bright, and he could see well.

Beyond the store, there was an open space, and then clumps of tall rhododendron bushes which had overgrown the path leading to the tennis court. Above the bushes, the chain-link fence was laced with creeping vines. To the left was the first of the worker cottages. He could see only the dark roof. To the right of the court, nearer the store, there was thick foliage, although he saw a gap—

A path.

He moved forward, leaving the store behind. Approaching the dark gap in the bushes he saw a vertical line, and realized it was the edge of an open wooden door. There was a shed, back in the foliage. The other door was closed. As he came closer, he saw a rusted metal sign, with flaking red lettering. The letters were black in the moonlight.

PRECAUCION
NON FUMARE
INFLAMMABLE

He paused, listening. He heard the raptors snarling in the distance, but they seemed far away, back up on the hill. For some reason they still had not approached the village.

Thorne waited, heart pounding, staring forward at the dark entrance to the shed. At last he decided it wasn’t going to get any easier. They needed gas. He moved forward.

The path to the shed was wet from the night’s rain, but the shed was dry inside. His eyes adjusted. It was a small place, perhaps twelve by twelve. In the dim light he saw a dozen rusted drums, standing on end. Three or four more, on their sides. Thorne touched them all quickly, one after another. They were light: empty.

Every one, empty.

Feeling defeated, Thorne moved back toward the entrance to the shed. He paused for a moment, staring out at the moonlit night. And then, as he waited, he heard the unmistakable sound of breathing.

Inside the store, Levine moved from window to window, trying to follow Thorne’s progress. His body was jumpy with tension. What was Thorne doing? He had gone so far from the store. It was very unwise. Levine kept glancing at the front door, wishing he could lock it. He felt so unsafe with the door unlocked.

Now Thorne had gone off into the bushes, disappearing entirely from view. And he had been gone a long time. At least a minute or two.

Levine stared out the window, and bit his lip. He heard the distant snarl of the raptors, and realized that they had remained up at the entrance to the laboratory. They hadn’t followed the vehicles down, even now. Why not? he wondered. The question was welcome in his mind. Calming, almost soothing. A question to answer. Why had the raptors stayed up at the laboratory?

All kinds of explanations occurred to him. The raptors had an atavistic fear of the laboratory, the place of their birth. They remembered the cages and didn’t want to be captured again. But he suspected the most likely explanation was also the simplest—that the area around the laboratory was some other animal’s territory, it was scent-marked and demarcated and defended, and the raptors were reluctant to enter it. Even the tyrannosaur, he remembered now, had gone through the territory quickly, without stopping.

But whose territory?

Levine stared out the window impatiently, as he waited.

“What about the lights?” Sarah called, from across the room. “I need light here.”

“In a minute,” Levine said.

At the entrance to the shed, Thorne stood silently, listening.

He heard soft, snorting exhalations, like a quiet horse. A large animal, waiting. The sound was coming from somewhere to his right. Thorne looked over, slowly.

He saw nothing at all. Moonlight shone brightly over the worker village. He saw the store, the gas pumps, the dark shape of the Jeep. Looking to his right, he saw an open space, and clumps of rhododendron bushes. The tennis court beyond.

Nothing else.

He stared, listening hard.

The soft snorting continued. Hardly louder than a faint breeze. But there was no breeze: the trees and bushes were not moving.

Or were they?

Thorne had the sense that something was wrong. Something right before his eyes, something that he could see but couldn’t see. With the effort of staring, he began to think his eyes were playing tricks on him. He thought he detected a slight movement in the bushes to the right. The pattern of the leaves seemed to shift in the moonlight. Shift, and stabilize again.

But he wasn’t sure.

Thorne stared forward, straining. And as he looked he began to think that it wasn’t the bushes that had caught his eye, but rather the chain-link fence. For most of its length, the fence was overgrown with an irregular tangle of vines, but in a few places the regular diamond pattern of links was visible. And there was something strange about that pattern. The fence seemed to be moving, rippling.

Thorne watched carefully. Maybe it is moving, he thought. Maybe there’s an animal inside the fence, pushing against it, making it move. But that didn’t seem quite right.

It was something else.…

Suddenly, lights came on inside the store. They shone through the barred windows, casting a geometric pattern of dark shadows across the open clearing, and onto the bushes by the tennis court. And for a moment—just a moment—Thorne saw that the bushes beside the tennis court were oddly shaped, and that they were actually two dinosaurs, seven feet tall, standing side by side, staring right at him.

Their bodies seemed to be covered in a patchwork pattern of light and dark that made them blend in perfectly with leaves behind them, and even with the fence of the tennis court. Thorne was confused. Their concealment had been perfect—too perfect—until the lights from the store windows had shone out and caught them in the sudden bright glare.

Thorne watched, holding his breath. And then he realized that the leafy light-and-dark pattern went only partway up their bodies, to mid-thorax. Above that, the animals had a kind of diamond-shaped crisscross pattern that matched the fence.

And as Thorne stared, the complex patterns on their bodies faded, the animals turned a chalky white, and then a series of vertical striped shadows began to appear, which exactly matched the shadows cast by the windows.

And before his eyes, the two dinosaurs disappeared from view again. Squinting, with concentrated effort, he could just barely distinguish the outlines of their bodies. He would never have been able to see them at all, had he not already known they were there.

They were chameleons. But with a power of mimicry unlike any chameleon Thorne had ever seen.

Slowly, he backed away into the shed, moving deeper into darkness.

“My God!” Levine exclaimed, staring out the window.

“Sorry,” Harding said. “But I had to turn on the lights. That boy needs help. I can’t do it in the dark.”

Levine did not answer her. He was staring out the window, trying to comprehend what he had just seen. He now realized what he had glimpsed the day Diego was killed. That brief momentary sense that something was wrong. Levine now knew what it was. But it was quite beyond anything that was known among terrestrial animals and—

“What is it?” she said, standing alongside him at the window. “Is it Thorne?”

“Look,” Levine said.

She stared out through the bars. “At the bushes? What? What am I supposed to—”

“Look,” he said.

She watched for a moment longer, then shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

“Start at the bottom of the bushes,” Levine told her. “Then let your eyes move up very slowly.… Just look … and you’ll see the outline.”

He heard her sigh. “I’m sorry.”

“Then turn out the lights again,” he said. “And you’ll see.”

She turned the lights out, and for a moment Levine saw the two animals in sharp relief, their bodies pale white with vertical stripes in the moonlight. Almost immediately, the pattern started to fade.

Harding came back, pushed in alongside him, and this time she saw the animals instantly. Just as Levine knew she would.

“No shit,” she said. “There are two of them?”

“Yes. Side by side.”

“And … is the pattern fading?”

“Yes. It’s fading.” As they watched, the striped pattern on their skins was replaced by the leafy pattern of the rhododendrons behind them. Once again, the two dinosaurs blended into invisibility. But such complex patterning implied that their epidermal layers were arranged in a manner similar to the chromatophores of marine invertebrates. The subtlety of shading, the rapidity of the changes all suggested—

Harding frowned. “What are they?” she asked.

“Chameleons of unparalleled skill, obviously. Although I’m not sure one is entirely justified in referring to them as chameleons, since technically chameleons have only the ability—”

“What are they?” Sarah said impatiently.

“Actually, I’d say they’re Carnotaurus sastrei. Type specimen’s from Patagonia. Three meters in height, with distinctive heads—you notice the short, bulldog snouts, and the pair of large horns above the eyes? Almost like wings—”

“They’re carnivores?”

“Yes, of course, they have the—”

“Where’s Thorne?”

“He went into that clump of bushes to the right, some time ago. I haven’t seen him, but—”

“What do we do?” she said.

“Do?” Levine said. “I’m not sure I follow you.”

“We have to do something,” she said, speaking slowly, as if he were a child. “We have to help Thorne get back.”

“I don’t know how,” Levine said. “Those animals must weigh five hundred pounds each. And there are two of them. I told him not to go out in the first place. But now …”

Harding frowned. Staring out, she said, “Go turn the lights back on.”

“I’d prefer to—”

“Go turn the lights back on!”

Levine got up irritably. He had been relishing his remarkable discovery, a truly unanticipated feature of dinosaurs—although not, of course, entirely without precedent among related vertebrates—and now this little musclebound female was barking orders at him. Levine was offended. After all, she was not much of a scientist. She was a naturalist. A field devoid of theory. One of those people who poked around in animal crap and imagined they were doing original research. A nice outdoor life, is all it amounted to. It wasn’t science by any stretch—

“On!” Harding shouted, looking out the window.

He flicked the lights on, and started to head back to the window.

“Off!”

Hastily, he went back and turned them off.

“On!”

He turned them on again.

She got up from the window, and crossed the room. “They didn’t like that,” she said. “It bothered them.”

“Well, there’s probably a refractory period—”

“Yeah, I think so. Here. Open these.” She scooped up a handful of flashlights from one of the shelves, handed them to him, then went and got batteries from an adjacent wire rack. “I hope these still work.”

“What are you going to do?” Levine said.

“We,” she said, grimly. “We.”

* * *

Thorne stood in the darkness of the shed, staring outward through the open doors. Someone had been turning the lights on and off inside the store. Then, for a while they remained on. But now suddenly they went off again. The area in front of the shed was lit only by moonlight.

He heard movement, a soft rustling. He heard the breathing again. And then he saw the two dinosaurs, walking upright with stiff tails. Their skin patterns seemed to shift as they walked, and it was difficult to follow them, but they were moving toward the shed.

They arrived at the entrance, their bodies silhouetted against the moonlight beyond, their outlines finally clear. They looked like small tyrannosaurs, except they had protuberances above the eyes, and they had very small, stubby forelimbs. The carnivores ducked their squarish heads down, and looked into the shed cautiously. Snorting, sniffing. Their tails swinging slowly behind them.

They were really too big to come inside, and for a moment he hoped that they would not. Then the first of them lowered its head, growled, and stepped through the entrance.

Thorne held his breath. He was trying to think what to do, but he couldn’t think of anything at all. The animals were methodical, the first one moving aside so the second could enter as well.

Suddenly, from along the side of the store, a half-dozen glaring lights shone out in bright beams. The lights moved, splashed on the dinosaurs’ bodies. The beams began to move back and forth in slow, erratic patterns, like searchlights.

The dinosaurs were clearly visible, and they didn’t like it. They growled and tried to step away from the lights, but the beams moved continuously, searching them out, crisscrossing over their bodies. As the lights passed over their torsos, the skin paled in response, reproducing the movement of the beams, after the lights had moved on. Their bodies streaking white, fading to dark, streaking white again.

The lights never stopped moving, except when they shone into the faces of the dinosaurs, and into their eyes. The big eyes blinked beneath their hooded wings; the animals twitched their heads and ducked away, as if annoyed by flies.

The dinosaurs became agitated. They turned, backing out of the shed, and bellowed loudly at the moving lights.

Still the lights moved, relentlessly swinging back and forth in the night. The pattern of movement was complex, confusing. The dinosaurs bellowed again, and took a menacing step toward the lights. But it was half-hearted. They clearly didn’t like being around these moving sources. After a moment, they shuffled off, the lights following them, driving them away past the tennis courts.

Thorne moved forward.

He heard Harding say, “Doc? Better get out of there, before they decide to come back.”

Thorne moved quickly toward the lights. He found himself standing beside Levine and Harding. They were swinging fistfuls of flashlights back and forth.

They all went back to the store.

Inside, Levine slammed the door shut, and sagged back against it. “I was never so frightened in my entire life.”

“Richard,” Harding said coldly. “Get a grip on yourself.” She crossed the room, and placed the flashlights on the counter.

“Going out there was insane,” Levine said, wiping his forehead. He was drenched in sweat, his shirt stained dark.

“Actually, it was a slam dunk,” Harding said. She turned to Thorne. “You could see they had a refractory period for skin response. It’s fast compared to, say, an octopus, but it’s still there. My assumption was that those dinosaurs were like all animals that rely on camouflage. They’re basically ambushers. They’re not particularly fast or active. They stand motionless for hours in an unchanging environment, disappearing into the background, and they wait until some unsuspecting meal comes along. But if they have to keep adjusting to new light conditions, they know they can’t hide. They get anxious. And if they get anxious enough, they finally just run away. Which is what happened.”

Levine turned and glared angrily at Thorne. “This was all your fault. If you hadn’t gone out there that way, just wandering off—”

“Richard,” Harding said, cutting him off. “We need gas or we’ll never get out of here. Don’t you want to get out of here?”

Levine said nothing. He sulked.

“Well,” Thorne said, “there wasn’t any gas in the shed anyway.”

“Hey, everybody,” Sarah said. “Look who’s here!”

Arby came forward, leaning on Kelly. He had changed into clothes from the store: a pair of swimming trunks and a tee shirt that said “InGen Bioengineering Labs” and beneath, “We Make The Future.”

Arby had a black eye, a swollen cheekbone, and a cut that Harding had bandaged on his forehead. His arms and legs were badly bruised. But he was walking, and he managed a crooked smile.

Thorne said, “How do you feel, son?”

Arby said, “You know what I want more than anything, right now?”

“What?” Thorne said.

“Diet Coke,” Arby said. “And a lot of aspirin.”

Sarah bent over Malcolm. He was humming softly, staring upward. “How is Arby?” he asked.

“He’ll be okay.”

“Does he need any morphine?” Malcolm asked.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Good,” Malcolm said. He stretched out his arm, rolling up the sleeve.

* * *

Thorne cleaned the nest out of the microwave, and heated up some canned beef stew. He found a package of paper plates decorated in a Halloween motif—pumpkins and bats—and spooned the food onto the plates. The two kids ate hungrily.

He gave a plate to Sarah, then turned to Levine. “What about you?”

Levine was staring out the window. “No.”

Thorne shrugged.

Arby came over, holding his plate. “Is there any more?”

“Sure,” Thorne said. He gave him his own plate.

Levine went over and sat with Malcolm. Levine said, “Well, at least we were right about one thing. This island was a true lost world—a pristine, untouched ecology. We were right from the beginning.”

Malcolm looked over, and raised his head. “Are you joking?” he said. “What about all the dead apatosaurs?”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Levine said. “The raptors killed them, obviously. And then the raptors—”

“Did what?” Malcolm said. “Dragged them to their nest? Those animals weigh fifty tons, Richard. A hundred raptors couldn’t drag them. No, no.” He sighed. “The carcasses must have floated to a bend in the river, where they beached. The raptors made their nest at a source of convenient food supply—dead apatosaurs.”

“Well, possibly …”

“But why so many dead apatosaurs, Richard? Why do none of the animals attain adulthood? And why are there so many predators on the island?”

“Well. We need more data, of course—” Levine began.

“No, we don’t,” Malcolm said. “Didn’t you go through the lab? We already know the answer.”

“What is it?” Levine said, irritably.

“Prions,” Malcolm said, closing his eyes.

Levine frowned. “What’re prions?”

Malcolm sighed.

“Ian,” Levine said. “What are prions?”

“Go away,” Malcolm said, waving his hand.

Arby was curled up in a corner, near sleep. Thorne rolled up a tee shirt, and put it under the boy’s head. Arby mumbled something, and smiled.

In a few moments, he began to snore.

Thorne got up and went over to Sarah, who was standing by the window. Outside, the sky was beginning to lighten above the trees, turning pale blue.

“How much time now?” she said.

Thorne looked at his watch. “Maybe an hour.”

She started to pace. “We’ve got to get gas,” she said. “If we have gas, we can drive the Jeep to the helicopter site.”

“But there’s no gas,” Thorne said.

“There must be some, somewhere.” She continued to pace. “You tried the pumps.…”

“Yes. They’re dry.”

“What about inside the lab?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Where else? What about the trailer?”

Thorne shook his head. “It’s just a passive tow-trailer. The other unit has an auxiliary generator and some gas tanks. But it went over the cliff.”

“Maybe the tanks didn’t rupture when it fell. We still have the motorcycle. Maybe I can go out there and—”

“Sarah,” he said.

“It’s worth a try.”

“Sarah—”

From the window, Levine said softly, “Heads up. We have visitors.”

Good Mother

In the predawn light, the dinosaurs came out of the bushes and went directly toward the Jeep. There were six of them, big brown duckbills fifteen feet high, with curving snouts.

“Maiasaurs,” Levine said. “I didn’t know there were any here.”

“What are they doing?”

The huge animals clustered around the Jeep, and immediately began to tear it apart. One ripped away the canvas top. Another poked at the roll bar, rocking the vehicle back and forth.

“I don’t understand,” Levine said. “They’re hadrosaurs. Herbivores. This aggressiveness is quite uncharacteristic.”

“Uh-huh,” Thorne said. As they watched, the maiasaurs tipped the Jeep over. The vehicle crashed over on its side. One of the adults reared up, and stood on the side panels. Its huge feet crushed the vehicle inward.

But when the Jeep fell over, two white Styrofoam cases tumbled out onto the ground. The maiasaurs seemed to be focused on these cases. They nipped at the Styrofoam, tossing chunks of white around the ground. They moved hurriedly, in a kind of frenzy.

“Something to eat?” Levine said. “Some kind of dinosaur catnip? What?”

Then the top of one case tore away, and they saw a cracked egg inside. Protruding from the egg was a wrinkled bit of flesh. The maiasaurs slowed. Their movements were now cautious, gentle. They honked and grunted. The big bodies of the animals blocked their view.

There was a squeaking sound.

“You’re kidding,” Levine said.

On the ground, a tiny animal moved about. Its body was pale brown, almost white. It tried to stand, but flopped down at once. It was barely a foot long, with wrinkled folds of flesh around its neck. In a moment, a second animal tumbled out beside it.

Harding sighed.

Slowly, one of the maiasaurs ducked its huge head down, and gently scooped the baby up in its broad bill. It kept its mouth open as it raised its head. The baby sat calmly on the adult’s tongue, looking around with its tiny head as it rose high into the air.

The second baby was picked up. The adults milled around for a moment, as if unsure whether there was more to do, and then, honking loudly, they all moved off.

Leaving behind a crumpled, shattered vehicle.

Thorne said, “I guess gas is no longer a problem.”

“I guess not,” Sarah said.

Thorne stared at the wreckage of the Jeep, shaking his head. “It’s worse than a head-on collision,” he said. “It looks like it’s been put in a compactor. Just wasn’t built for those sorts of stresses.”

Levine snorted. “Engineers in Detroit didn’t expect a five-ton animal to stand on it.”

“You know,” Thorne said, “I would have liked to see how our own car stood up under that.”

“You mean, because we beefed it up?”

“Yes,” Thorne said. “We really built it to take fantastic stresses. Huge stresses. Ran it through computer programs, added those honeycomb panels, the whole—”

“Wait a minute,” Harding said, turning away from the window. “What are you talking about?”

“The other car,” Thorne said.

“What other car?”

“The car we brought,” he said. “The Explorer.”

“Of course!” she said, suddenly excited. “There’s another car! I completely forgot! The Explorer!”

“Well, it’s history now,” Thorne said. “It shorted out last night, when I was coming back to the trailer. I ran it through a puddle and it shorted out.”

“So? Maybe it still—”

“No,” Thorne said, shaking his head. “A short like that’d blow the VR. It’s an electric car. It’s dead.”

“I’m surprised you don’t have circuit breakers for that.”

“Well, we never used to put them in, although on this latest version …” He trailed off. He shook his head. “I can’t believe it.”

“The car has circuit breakers?”

“Yes. Eddie put them in, last minute.”

“So the car might still run?”

“Yes, it probably would, if you reset the breakers.”

“Where is it?” she said. She was heading for the motorcycle.

“I left it on that side road that runs from the ridge road down to the hide. But Sarah—”

“It’s our only chance,” she said. She pulled on her radio headset, adjusted the microphone to her cheek, and rolled the motorcycle to the door. “Call me,” she said. “I’m going to go find us a car.”

They watched through the windows. In the early-morning light, she climbed onto the motorcycle, and roared off up the hill.

Levine watched her go. “What do you figure her odds are?”

Thorne just shook his head.

The radio crackled. “Doc.”

Thorne picked it up. “Yes, Sarah.”

“I’m coming up the hill now. I see … there’s six of them.”

“Raptors?”

“Yeah. They’re, uh … Listen. I’m going to try another path. I see a—”

The radio crackled.

“Sarah?” She was breaking up.

“—sort of a game trail that—here—think I better—”

“Sarah,” Thorne said. “You’re breaking up.”

“—do now. So just—ish me luck.”

Over the radio, they heard the hum of the bike. Then they heard another sound, which might have been an animal snarl, and might have been more static. Thorne bent forward, holding the radio close to his ear. Then, abruptly, the radio clicked and was silent. He said, “Sarah?”

There was no answer.

“Maybe she turned it off,” Levine said.

Thorne shook his head. “Sarah?”

Nothing.

“Sarah? Are you there?”

They waited.

Nothing.

“Hell,” Thorne said.

Time passed slowly. Levine stood by the window, staring out. Kelly was snoring in a corner. Arby lay next to Malcolm, fast asleep. And Malcolm was humming tunelessly.

Thorne sat on the floor in the center of the room, leaning back against the checkout counter. Every so often, he’d pick up the radio and try to call Sarah, but there was never any answer. He tried all six channels. There was no answer on any of them.

Eventually he stopped trying.

The radio crackled. “—ate these damned things. Never work right.” A grunt. “Can’t figure out what—things—damn.”

Across the room, Levine sat forward.

Thorne grabbed the radio. “Sarah? Sarah?”

“Finally,” she said, her voice crackling. “Where the hell have you been, Doc?”

“Are you all right?”

“Of course I’m all right.”

“There’s something wrong with your radio. You’re breaking up.”

“Yeah? What should I do?”

“Try screwing down the cover on your battery pack. It’s probably loose.”

“No. I mean, what should I do about the car?”

Thorne said, “What?”

“I’m at the car, Doc. I’m there. What should I do?”

Levine glanced at his watch. “Twenty minutes until the helicopter arrives,” he said. “You know, she just might make it.”

Dodgson

Dodgson awoke, aching and stiff, on the floor of the concrete utility shed. He got to his feet, and looked out the window. He saw streaks of red in a pale-blue sky. He opened the door to the utility shed, and went outside.

He was very thirsty, and his body was sore. He started walking beneath the canopy of trees. The jungle around him was silent in the early morning. He needed water. More than anything, he needed water. Somewhere off to his left, he heard the soft gurgle of a stream. He headed toward it, moving more quickly.

Through the trees, he could see the sky growing lighter. He knew that Malcolm and his party were still here. They must have some plan to get off the island. If they could get off, he could too.

He came over a low rise, and looked down at a gully and a flowing stream. It looked clear. He hurried down toward it, wondering if it was polluted. He decided he didn’t care. Just before he reached the stream, he tripped over a vine and fell, swearing.

He got to his feet, and looked back. Then he saw it wasn’t a vine he had tripped over.

It was the strap of a green backpack.

Dodgson tugged at the strap, and the whole backpack slid out of the foliage. The pack had been torn apart, and it was crusty with dried blood. As he pulled it, the contents clattered out among the ferns. Flies were buzzing everywhere. But he saw a camera, a metal case for food, and a plastic water bottle. He searched quickly through the surrounding ferns. But he didn’t find much else, except some soggy candy bars.

Dodgson drank the water, and then realized he was very hungry. He popped open the metal case, hoping for some decent food. But the case didn’t contain food. It was filled with foam packing.

And in the center of the packing was a radio.

He flicked it on. The battery light glowed strongly. He flicked from one channel to another, hearing static.

Then a man’s voice. “Sarah? This is Thorne. Sarah?”

After a moment, a woman’s voice: “Doc. Did you hear me? I said, I’m at the car.”

Dodgson listened, and smiled.

So there was a car.

In the store, Thorne held the radio close to his cheek. “Okay,” he said. “Sarah? Listen carefully. Get in the car, and do exactly what I tell you.”

“Okay fine,” she said. “But tell me first. Is Levine there?”

“He’s here.”

The radio clicked. She said, “Ask him if there’s any danger from a green dinosaur that’s about four feet tall and has a domed forehead.”

Levine nodded. “Tell her yes. They’re called pachycephalosaurs.”

“He says yes,” Thorne said. “They’re pachycephalo-somethings, and you should be careful. Why?”

“Because there’s about fifty of them, all around the car.”

Explorer

The Explorer was sitting in the middle of a shady section of the road, with overhanging trees above. The car had stopped just beyond a depression, where there had no doubt been a large puddle the night before. Now the puddle had become a mudhole, thanks to the dozen or so animals that sat in it, splashed in it, drank from it, and rolled at its edges. These were the green dome-headed dinosaurs that she had been watching for the last few minutes, trying to decide what to do. Because not only were they near the mudhole, they were also located in front of the car, and around the sides of the car.

She had watched the pachycephalosaurs with uneasiness. Harding had spent a lot of time on the ground with wild animals, but usually animals she knew well. From long experience, she knew how closely she could approach, and under what circumstances. If this were a herd of wildebeest, she would walk right in without hesitation. If it were a herd of American buffalo, she would be cautious, but she’d still go in. And if it were a herd of African buffalo, she wouldn’t go anywhere near them.

She pushed the microphone against her cheek and said, “How much time left?”

“Twenty minutes.”

“Then I better get in there,” she said. “Any ideas?”

There was a pause. The radio crackled.

“Levine says nobody knows anything about these animals, Sarah.”

“Great.”

“Levine says a complete skeleton has never been recovered. So nobody has even a guess about their behavior, except that they’re probably aggressive.”

“Great,” she said.

She was looking at the situation of the car, and the overhanging trees. It was a shady area, peaceful and quiet in the early-morning light.

The radio crackled. “Levine says you might try walking slowly in, and see if the herd lets you through. But no quick movements, no sudden gestures.”

She stared at the animals and thought: They have those domed heads for a reason.

“No thanks,” she said. “I’m going to try something else.”

“What?”

In the store, Levine said, “What’d she say?”

“She said she was going to try something else.”

“Like what?” Levine said. He went to the window and looked out. The sky was growing lighter. He frowned. There was some consequence to that, he thought. Something he knew in the back of his mind, but wasn’t thinking about.

Something about daylight …

And territory.

Territory.

Levine looked out at the sky again, trying to put it together. What difference did it make that daylight was coming? He shook his head, gave it up for the moment. “How long to reset the breakers?”

“Just a minute or two,” Thorne said.

“Then there might still be time,” Levine said.

There was static hiss from the radio, and they heard Harding say, “Okay, I’m above the car.”

“You’re where?”

“I’m above the car,” she said. “In a tree.”

Harding climbed out on the branch, moving farther from the trunk, feeling it bend under her weight. The branch seemed supple. She was now ten feet above the car, swinging lower. Few of the animals below had looked up at her, but the herd seemed to be restless. Animals sitting in the mud got up, and began to turn and mill. She saw their tails flicking back and forth anxiously.

She moved farther out, and the branch bent lower. It was slippery from the night’s rain. She tried to gauge her position above the car. It looked pretty good, she thought.

Suddenly, one of the animals charged the trunk of the tree she was in, butting it hard. The impact was surprisingly forceful. The tree swayed, her branch swinging up and down, while she struggled to hold on.

Oh shit, she thought.

She rose up into the air, came down again, and then she lost her grip. Her hands slipped on wet leaves and wet bark, and she fell free. At the last moment, she saw that she would miss the car entirely. Then she hit the ground, landing hard in muddy earth.

Right beside the animals.

The radio crackled. “Sarah?” Thorne said.

There was no answer.

“What’s she doing now?” Levine began to pace nervously. “I wish we could see what she’s doing.”

In the corner of the room, Kelly got up, rubbing her eyes. “Why don’t you use the video?”

Thorne said, “What video?”

Kelly pointed to the cash register. “That’s a computer.”

“It is?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

* * *

Kelly yawned as she sat in the chair facing the cash register. It looked like a dumb terminal, which meant it probably didn’t have access to much, but it was worth a try anyway. She turned it on. Nothing happened. She flicked the power switch back and forth. Nothing.

Idly, she swung her legs, and kicked a wire beneath the table. She bent over and saw that the terminal was unplugged. So she plugged it in.

The screen glowed, and a single word appeared:

To proceed further, she knew she needed a password. Arby had a password. She glanced over and saw that he was still asleep. She didn’t want to wake him up. She remembered that he had written it down on a piece of paper and stuck it in his pocket. Maybe it was still in his clothes, she thought. She crossed the room, found the bundle of his wet, muddy clothes, and began going through the pockets. She found his wallet, the keys to his house, and some other stuff. Finally she found a piece of paper in his back pocket. It was damp, and streaked with mud. The ink had smeared, but she could still read his writing:

VIG/&*849/

Kelly took the paper and went back to the computer. She typed in all the characters carefully, and pressed the return key. The screen went blank, and then a new screen came up. She was surprised. It was different from the screen she had seen earlier, in the trailer.

She was in the system. But the whole thing looked different. Maybe because this wasn’t the radionet, she thought. She must be logged into the actual laboratory system. It had more graphics because the terminal was hard-wired. Maybe they even ran optical pipe out here.

Across the room, Levine said, “Kelly? How about it?”

“I’m working on it,” she said.

Cautiously, she began to type. Rows of icons appeared rapidly across the screen, one after another.

She knew she was looking at a graphic interface of some kind, but the meaning of the images wasn’t obvious to her, and there were no explanations. The people who had used this system were probably trained to know what the images meant. But Kelly didn’t know. She wanted to get into the video system, yet none of the pictures suggested anything to do with video. She moved the cursor around, wondering what to do.

She decided she’d have to guess. She picked the diamond-shaped icon on the lower left, and clicked on it.

“Uh-oh,” she said, alarmed.

Levine looked over. “Something wrong?”

“No,” she said. “It’s fine.” She quickly clicked on the header, and got back to the previous screen. This time she tried one of the triangular-shaped icons.

The screen changed again:

That’s it, she thought. Immediately the image popped off, and the actual video images began to flash up on the screen. On this little cash-register monitor, the pictures were tiny, but now she was in familiar territory, and she moved around quickly, moving the cursor, manipulating the images.

“What are you looking for?” she said.

“The Explorer,” Thorne said.

She clicked the screen. The image zoomed up. “Got it,” she said.

Levine said, “You do?” He sounded surprised.

Kelly looked at him and said, “Yeah, I do.”

The two men came and stared at the screen over her shoulder. They could see the Explorer, on a shaded road. They could see the pachycephalosaurs, lots of them, milling around the car. The animals were poking at the tires and the front fender.

But they didn’t see Sarah anywhere.

“Where is she?” Thorne said.

Sarah Harding was underneath the car, lying on her face in the mud. She had crawled there after she fell—it was the only place to go—and now she was staring out at the animals’ feet milling all around her. She said, “Doc. Are you there? Doc? Doc.” But the damned radio wasn’t working again. The pachys were stamping and snorting, trying to get at her under the car.

Then she remembered that Thorne had said something about screwing down the battery pack. She reached behind her back, and found the pack, and twisted the cover shut tight.

Immediately, her earpiece began to crackle with static.

“Doc,” she said.

“Where are you?” Thorne said.

“I’m under the car.”

“Why? Did you already try it?”

“Try what?”

“Try to start it. To start the car.”

“No,” she said, “I didn’t try to start it, I fell.”

“Well, as long as you’re under there, you can check the breakers,” Thorne said.

“The breakers are under the car?”

“Some of them. Look up by the front wheels.”

She twisted her body, sliding in the mud. “Okay. I’m looking.”

“There’s a box right behind the front bumper. Over on the left.”

“I see it.”

“Can you open it?”

“I think so.” She crawled forward, and pulled at the latch. The lid came down. She was staring at three black switches. “I see three switches and they are all pointing up.”

“Up?”

“Toward the front of the car.”

“Hmmm,” Thorne said. “That doesn’t make sense. Can you read the writing?”

“Yes. It says ‘15 VV’ and then ‘02 R.’ ”

“Okay,” he said. “That explains it.”

“What?”

“The box is in backward. Flip all the switches the other way. Are you dry?”

“No, Doc. I’m soaking wet, lying in the damn mud.”

“Well then, use your shirtsleeve or something.”

Harding pulled herself forward, approaching the bumper. The nearest pachys snorted and banged on the bumper. They leaned down and twisted their heads, trying to get to her. “They have very bad breath,” she said.

“Say again?”

“Never mind.” She flipped the switches, one after another. She heard a hum, from the car above her. “Okay. I did it. The car is making a noise.”

“That’s fine,” Thorne said.

“What do I do now?”

“Nothing. You better wait.”

She lay back in the mud, looking at the feet of the pachys. They were moving, tramping all around her.

“How much time left?” she said.

“About ten minutes.”

She said, “Well, I’m stuck under here, Doc.”

“I know.”

She looked at the animals. They were on all sides of the car. If anything, they seemed to be growing more active and excited. They stamped their feet and snuffled impatiently. Why were they so worked up? she wondered. And then, suddenly, they all thundered off. They ran toward the front of the car, and away, up the road. She twisted her body and watched them go.

There was silence.

“Doc?” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Why’d they leave?”

“Stay under the car,” Thorne said.

“Doc?”

“Don’t talk.” The radio clicked off.

She waited, not sure what was happening. She had heard the tension in Thorne’s voice. She didn’t know why. But now she heard a soft scuffling sound, and looking over, saw two feet standing by the driver’s side of the car.

Two feet in muddy boots.

Men’s boots.

Harding frowned. She recognized the boots. She recognized the khaki trousers, even though they were now caked with mud.

It was Dodgson.

The man’s boots turned to face the door. She heard the door latch click.

Dodgson was getting in the car.

Harding acted so swiftly, she was not aware of thinking. Grunting, she swung her body around sideways, reached out with her arms, grabbed both ankles, and pulled hard. Dodgson fell, giving a yell of surprise. He landed on his back, and turned, his face dark and angry.

He saw her and scowled. “No shit,” he said. “I thought I finished you off on the boat.”

Harding went red with rage, and started to crawl out from under the car. Dodgson scrambled to his knees as she was halfway out, but then she felt the ground begin to shake. And she immediately knew why. She saw Dodgson look over his shoulder, and flatten himself on the ground. Hurriedly, he started to crawl under the car beside her.

She turned in the mud, looking down along the length of the car. And she saw a tyrannosaurus coming up the road toward them. The ground vibrated with each step. Now Dodgson was crawling toward the center of the car, pushing himself close to her, but she ignored him. She watched the big feet with the splayed claws as they came alongside the car, and stopped. Each foot was three feet long. She heard the tyrannosaur growling.

She looked at Dodgson. His eyes were wide with terror. The tyrannosaur paused beside the car. The big feet shifted. She heard the animal somewhere above, sniffing. Then, growling again, the head came down. The lower jaw touched the ground. She could not see the eye, just the lower jaw. The tyrannosaur sniffed again, long and slow.

It could smell them.

Beside her, Dodgson was trembling uncontrollably. But Harding was strangely calm. She knew what she had to do. Quickly, she shifted her body, twisting around, moving so her head and shoulders were braced against the rear wheel of the car. Dodgson turned to look at her just as her boots began to push against his lower legs. Pushing them out from beneath the car.

Terrified, Dodgson struggled, trying to push back, but her position was much stronger. Inch by inch, his boots moved out into the cold morning light. Then his calves. She grunted as she pushed, concentrating every ounce of her energy. In a high-pitched voice, Dodgson said, “What the hell are you doing?”

She heard the tyrannosaur growling. She saw the big feet move.

Dodgson said, “Stop it! Are you crazy? Stop it!”

But Harding didn’t stop. She got her boot on his shoulder, and pushed once more. For a while Dodgson struggled against her, and then suddenly his body moved easily, and she saw that the tyrannosaur had his legs in its jaws and was pulling Dodgson out from under the car.

Dodgson wrapped his hands around her boot, trying to hold on, trying to drag her with him. She put her other boot on his face and kicked hard. He let go. He slid away from her.

She saw his terrified face, ashen, mouth open. No words came out. She saw his fingers, digging into the mud, leaving deep gouges as he was pulled away. And then his body was dragged out. Everything was strangely quiet. She saw Dodgson spin around onto his back, and look upward. She saw the shadow of the tyrannosaur fall across him. She saw the big head come down, the jaws wide. And she heard Dodgson begin to scream as the jaws closed around his body, and he was lifted up.

Dodgson felt himself rise high into the air, twenty feet above the ground, and all the time he continued to scream. He knew at any moment the animal would snap its great jaws shut, and he would die. But the jaws never closed. Dodgson felt stabbing pain in his sides, but the jaws never closed.

Still screaming, Dodgson felt himself carried back into the jungle. High branches of trees lashed his face. The hot breath of the animal whooshed in snorts over his body. Saliva dripped onto his torso. He thought he would pass out from terror.

But the jaws never closed.

Inside the store, they stared at the tiny monitor as Dodgson was carried away in the jaws of the tyrannosaur. Over the radio, they heard his tinny distant screams.

“You see?” Malcolm said. “There is a God.”

Levine was frowning. “The rex didn’t kill him.” He pointed to the screen. “Look, there, you can see his arms are still moving. Why didn’t it kill him?”

Sarah Harding waited until the screams faded. She crawled out from beneath the car, standing up in the morning light. She opened the door and got behind the wheel. The key was in the ignition; she gripped it with muddy fingers. She twisted it.

There was a chugging sound, and then a soft whine. All the dashboard lights came on. Then silence. Was the car working? She turned the wheel and it moved easily. So the power steering was on.

“Doc.”

“Yes, Sarah.”

“The car’s working. I’m coming back.”

“Okay,” he said. “Hurry.”

She put it in drive, and felt the transmission engage. The car was unusually quiet, almost silent. Which was why she was able to hear the faint thumping of a distant helicopter.

Daylight

She was driving beneath a thick canopy of trees, back toward the village. She heard the sound of the helicopter build in intensity. Then it roared overhead, unseen through the foliage above. She had the window down, and was listening. It seemed to move off to her right, toward the south.

The radio clicked. “Sarah.”

“Yes, Doc.”

“Listen: we can’t communicate with the helicopter.”

“Okay,” she said. She understood what had to be done. “Where’s the landing site?”

“South. About a mile. There’s a clearing. Take the ridge road.”

She was coming up to the fork. She saw the ridge road going off to the right. “Okay,” she said. “I’m going.”

“Tell them to wait for us,” Thorne said. “Then come back and get us.”

“Everybody okay?” she said.

“Everybody’s fine,” Thorne said.

She followed the road, hearing a change in the sound of the helicopter. She realized it must be landing. The rotors continued, a low whirr, which meant the pilot wasn’t going to shut down.

The road curved off to the left. The sound of the helicopter was now a muted thumping. She accelerated, driving fast, careening around the corner. The road was still wet from the rains the night before. She wasn’t raising a cloud of dust behind her. There was nothing to tell anyone that she was here.

“Doc. How long will they wait?”

“I don’t know,” Thorne said, over the radio. “Can you see it?”

“Not yet,” she said.

Levine stared out the window. He looked at the lightening sky, through the trees. The streaks of red were gone. It was now a bright even blue. Daylight was definitely coming.

Daylight …

And then he put it together. He shivered as he realized. He went to the window on the opposite side, looked out toward the tennis court. He stared at the spot where the carnotauruses had been the night before. They were gone now.

Just as he feared.

“This is bad,” he said.

“It’s only just now eight,” Thorne said, glancing at his watch.

“How long will it take her?” Levine said.

“I don’t know. Three or four minutes.”

“And then to get back?” Levine said.

“Another five minutes.”

“I hope we make it that long.” He was frowning unhappily.

“Why?” Thorne said. “We’re okay.”

“In a few minutes,” Levine said, “we’ll have direct sun shining down outside.”

“So what?” Thorne said.

The radio clicked. “Doc,” Sarah said. “I see it. I see the helicopter.”

Sarah came around a final curve and saw the landing site off to her left. The helicopter was there, blades spinning. She saw another junction in the road, with a narrow road leading left down a hill, into jungle, and then out to the clearing. She drove down it, descending a series of switchbacks, forcing her to go slow. She was now back in the jungle, beneath the canopy of trees. The ground leveled out, she splashed across a narrow stream, and accelerated forward.

Directly ahead there was a gap in the tree canopy, and sunlight on the clearing beyond. She saw the helicopter. Its rotors were beginning to spin faster—it was leaving! She saw the pilot behind the bubble, wearing dark glasses. The pilot checked his watch, shook his head to the copilot, and then began to lift off.

Sarah honked her horn, and drove madly forward. But she knew they could not hear her. Her car bounced and jolted. Thorne was saying, “What is it? Sarah! What’s happening?”

She drove forward, leaning out the window, yelling “Wait! Wait!” But the helicopter was already rising into the air, lifting up out of her view. The sound began to fade. By the time her car burst out of the jungle into the clearing, she saw the helicopter heading away, disappearing over the rocky rim of the island.

And then it was gone.

“Let’s stay calm,” Levine said, pacing the little store. “Tell her to get back right away. And let’s stay calm.” He seemed to be talking to himself. He walked from one wall to the next, pounding the wooden planks with his fist. He shook his head unhappily. “Just tell her to hurry. You think she can be back in five minutes?”

“Yes,” Thorne said. “Why? What is it, Richard?”

Levine pointed out the window. “Daylight,” he said. “We’re trapped here in daylight.”

“We were trapped here all night, too,” Thorne said. “We made it okay.”

“But daylight is different,” Levine said.

“Why?”

“Because at night,” he said, “this is carnotaurus territory. Other animals don’t come in. We saw no other animals at all around here, last night. But once daylight comes, the carnotaurus can’t hide any more. Not in open spaces, in direct sunlight. So they’ll leave. And then this won’t be their territory any more.”

“Which means?”

Levine glanced at Kelly, over by the computer. He hesitated, then said, “Just take my word for it. We have to get out of here right away.”

“And go where?”

Sitting at the computer, Kelly listened to Thorne talking to Dr. Levine. She fingered the piece of paper with Arby’s password on it. She felt very nervous. The way Dr. Levine was talking was making her nervous. She wished Sarah was back by now. She would feel better when Sarah was here.

Kelly didn’t like to think about their situation. She had been holding herself together, keeping up her spirits, until the helicopter came. But now the helicopter had come and gone. And she noticed neither of the men was talking about when it would come back. Maybe they knew something. Like it wasn’t coming back.

Dr. Levine was saying they had to get out of the store. Thorne was asking Dr. Levine where he wanted to go. Levine said. “I’d prefer to get off this island, but I don’t see how we can. So I suppose we should make our way back to the trailer. It’s the safest place now.”

Back to the trailer, she thought. Where she and Sarah had gone to get Malcolm. Kelly didn’t want to go back to the trailer.

She wanted to go home.

Tensely, Kelly smoothed out the piece of damp paper, pressing it flat on the table beside her. Dr. Levine came over. “Stop fooling around,” he said. “See if you can find Sarah.”

“I want to go home,” Kelly said.

Levine sighed. “I know, Kelly,” he said. “We all want to go home.” And he walked away again, moving quickly, tensely.

Kelly pushed the paper away, turning it over, and sliding it under the keyboard, in case she should need the password again. As she did so, her eye was caught by some writing on the other side.

She pulled the paper out again.

She saw:

SITE B LEGENDS

She realized at once what it was: a screen shot from Levine’s apartment. From the night when Arby had been recovering files from the computer. It seemed like a million years ago, another lifetime. But it had really been only … what? Two days ago.

She remembered how proud Arby had been when he had recovered the data. She remembered how they had all tried to make sense of this list. Now, of course, all these names had meaning. They were all real places: the laboratory, the worker village, the convenience store, the gas station.…

She stared at the list.

You’re kidding, she thought.

“Dr. Thorne,” she said. “I think you better look at this.”

Thorne stared as she pointed at the list. “You think so?” he said.

“That’s what it says: a boathouse.”

“Can you find it, Kelly?”

“You mean, find it on the video?” She shrugged. “I can try.”

“Try,” Thorne said. He glanced at Levine, who was across the room, pounding on the walls again. He picked up the radio.

“Sarah? It’s Doc.”

And the radio crackled. “Doc? I’ve had to stop for a minute.”

“Why?” Thorne said.

Sarah Harding was stopped on the ridge road. Fifty yards ahead, she saw the tyrannosaur, going down the road away from her. She could see that he had Dodgson in his mouth. And somehow, Dodgson was still alive. His body was still moving. She thought she could hear him scream.

She was surprised to find she had no feeling about him at all. She watched dispassionately as the tyrannosaur left the road, and headed off down a slope, back into the jungle.

Sarah started the car, and drove cautiously forward.

At the computer console, Kelly flicked through video images, one after another, until finally she found it: a wooden dock, enclosed inside a shed or a boathouse, open to the air at the far end. The interior of the boathouse looked in pretty good shape; there weren’t a lot of vines and ferns growing over things. She saw a powerboat tied up, rocking against the dock. She saw three oil drums to one side. And out the back of the boathouse there was open water, and sunlight; it looked like a river.

“What do you think?” she said to Thorne.

“I think it’s worth a try,” he said, looking over her shoulder. “But where is it? Can you find a map?”

“Maybe,” she said. She flicked the keys, and managed to get back to the main screen, with its perplexing icons.

Arby awoke, yawned, and came over to look at what she was doing. “Nice graphics. You logged on, huh?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I did. But I’m having a little trouble figuring it out.”

Levine was pacing, staring out the windows. “This is all well and good,” he said, “but it is getting brighter out there by the minute. Don’t you understand? We need a way out of here. This building is single-wall construction. It’s fine for the tropics, but it’s basically a shack.”

“It’ll do,” Thorne said.

“For three minutes, maybe. I mean, look at this,” Levine said. He walked to the door, rapped it with his knuckles. “This door is just—”

With a crash, the wood splintered around the lock, and the door swung open. Levine was thrown aside, landing hard on the floor.

A raptor stood hissing in the doorway.

A Way Out

Sitting at the console, Kelly was frozen in terror. She watched as Thorne ran forward from the side, throwing the full weight of his body against the door, slamming it hard against the raptor. Startled, the animal was knocked back. The door closed on its clawed hand. Thorne leaned against the door. On the other side, the animal snarled and pounded.

“Help me!” Thorne shouted. Levine scrambled to his feet and ran forward, adding his weight.

“I told you!” Levine shouted.

Suddenly there were raptors all around the store. Snarling, they threw themselves at the windows, denting the steel bars, pushing them in toward the glass. They slammed against the wooden walls, knocking down shelves, sending cans and bottles clattering to the floor. In several places, the wood began to splinter on the walls.

Levine looked back at her: “Find a way out of here!”

Kelly stared. The computer was forgotten.

“Come on, Kel,” Arby said. “Concentrate.”

She turned back to the screen, unsure what to do. She clicked on the cross in the left corner. Nothing happened. She clicked on the upper-left circle. Suddenly, icons began to print out rapidly, filling the screen.

“Don’t worry, there must be a key to explain it,” Arby said. “We just need to know what—”

But Kelly was not listening, she was pressing more buttons and moving the cursor, already trying to get something to happen, to get a help screen, something. Anything.

Suddenly, the whole screen began to twist, to distort.

“What did you do?” Arby said, in alarm.

Kelly was sweating. “I don’t know,” she said. She pulled her hands away from the keyboard.

“It’s worse,” Arby said. “You made it worse.”

The screen continued to squeeze together, the icons shifting, distorting slowly as they watched.

“Come on, kids!” Levine shouted.

“We’re trying!” Kelly said.

Arby said, “It’s becoming a cube.”

Thorne pushed the big glass-walled refrigerator in front of the door. The raptor slammed against the metal, rattling the cans inside.

“Where are the guns?” Levine said.

“Sarah has three in her car.”

“Great.” At the windows, some of the bars were now so deeply dented that they broke the glass. Along the right-hand wall, the wood was splintering, tearing open big gaps.

“We have to get out of here,” Levine shouted at Kelly. “We have to find a way!” He ran to the rear of the store, to the bathrooms. But a moment later he returned. “They’re back there, too!”

It was happening fast, all around them.

On the screen, she now saw a rotating cube, turning in space. Kelly didn’t know how to stop it.

“Come on, Kel,” Arby said, peering at her through swollen eyes. “You can do it. Concentrate. Come on.”

Everyone in the room was shouting. Kelly stared at the cube on the screen, feeling hopeless and lost. She didn’t know what she was doing any more. She didn’t know why she was there. She didn’t know what the point of anything was. Why wasn’t Sarah here?

Standing beside her, Arby said, “Come on. Do the icons one at a time, Kel. You can do it. Come on. Stay with it. Focus.”

But she couldn’t focus. She couldn’t click on the icons, they were rotating too fast on the screen. There must be parallel processors to handle all the graphics. She just stared at it. She found herself thinking of all sorts of things—thoughts that just came unbidden into her mind.

The cord under the desk.

Hard-wired.

Lots of graphics.

Sarah talking to her in the trailer.

“Come on, Kel. You have to do this now. Find a way out.”

In the trailer, Sarah said: Most of what people tell you will be wrong.

“It’s important, Kel,” Arby said. He was trembling as he stood beside her. She knew he concentrated on computers as a way to block things out. As a way to—

The wall splintered wide, an eight-inch plank cracking inward, and a raptor stuck his head through, snarling, snapping his jaws.

She kept thinking of the cord under the desk. The cord under the desk. Her legs had kicked the cord under the desk.

The cord under the desk.

Arby said, “It’s important.”

And then it hit her.

“No,” she said to him. “It’s not important.” And she dropped off the seat, crawling down under the desk to look.

“What are you doing?” Arby screamed.

But already Kelly had her answer. She saw the cable from the computer going down into the floor, through a neat hole. She saw a seam in the wood. Her fingers scrabbled at the floor, pulling at it. And suddenly the panel came away in her hands. She looked down. Darkness.

Yes.

There was a crawlspace. No, more. A tunnel.

She shouted, “Here!”

The refrigerator fell forward. The raptors crashed through the front door. From the sides, other animals tore through the walls, knocking over the display cases. The raptors sprang into the room, snarling and ducking. They found the bundle of Arby’s wet clothes and snapped at them, ripping them apart in fury.

They moved quickly, hunting.

But the people were gone.

Escape

Kelly was in the lead, holding a flashlight. They moved, single file, along damp concrete walls. They were in a tunnel four feet square, with flat metal racks of cables along the left side. Water and gas pipes ran near the ceiling. The tunnel smelled moldy. She heard the squeak of rats.

They came to a Y-junction. She looked both ways. To the right was a long straight passageway, going into darkness. It probably led to the laboratory, she thought. To the left was a much shorter section of tunnel, with stairs at the end.

She went left.

She crawled up through a narrow concrete shaft, and pushed open a wooden trapdoor at the top. She found herself in a small utility building, surrounded by cables and rusted pipes. Sunlight streamed in through broken windows. The others climbed up beside her.

She looked out the window, and saw Sarah Harding driving down the hill toward them.

Harding drove the Explorer along the edge of the river. Kelly was sitting beside her in the front seat. They saw a wooden sign for the boathouse up ahead.

“So it was the graphics that gave you the clue, Kelly?” Harding said, admiringly.

Kelly nodded. “I just suddenly realized, it didn’t matter what was actually on the screen. What mattered was there was a lot of data being manipulated, millions of pixels spinning there, and that meant there had to be a cable. And if there was a cable, there must be a space for it. And enough space that workmen could repair it, all of that.”

“So you looked under the desk.”

“Yes,” she said.

“That’s very good,” Harding said. “I think these people owe you their lives.”

“Not really,” Kelly said, with a little shrug.

Sarah shot her a look. “All your life, other people will try to take your accomplishments away from you. Don’t you take it away from yourself.”

The road was muddy alongside the river, and heavily overgrown with plants. They heard the distant cries of the dinosaurs, somewhere behind them. Harding maneuvered around a fallen tree, and then they saw the boathouse ahead.

“Uh-oh,” Levine said. “I have a bad feeling.”

From the outside, the building was in ruins, and heavily overgrown with vines. The roof had caved in in several places. No one spoke as Harding pulled the Explorer up in front of a pair of broad double doors sealed with a rusted padlock. They climbed out of the car and walked forward in ankle-deep mud.

“You really think there’s a boat in there?” Arby said doubtfully.

Malcolm leaned on Harding, while Thorne threw his weight against the door. Rotten timbers creaked, then splintered. The padlock fell to the ground. Harding said, “Here, hold him,” and put Malcolm’s arm over Thorne’s shoulder. Then she kicked a hole in the door wide enough to crawl through. Immediately she went inside, into darkness. Kelly hurried in after her.

“What do you see?” Levine said, pulling planks away to widen the hole. A furry spider scurried up the boards, jumping away.

“There’s a boat here, all right,” Harding said. “And it looks okay.”

Levine pushed his head through the hole.

“I’ll be damned,” he said. “We just might get out of here, after all.”

Exit

Lewis Dodgson fell.

Tumbling through the air, he dropped from the mouth of the tyrannosaur, and landed hard on an earthen slope. The breath was knocked out of him, his head slammed down, and he was dizzy for a moment. He opened his eyes, and saw a sloping bank of dried mud. He smelled a sour odor of decay. And then he heard a sound that chilled him: it was a high-pitched squeaking.

He got up on one elbow, and saw he was in the tyrannosaur nest. The sloping mound of dried mud was all around him. Now there were three infants here, including one with a piece of aluminum wrapped around its leg. The infants were squeaking with excitement as they toddled toward him.

Dodgson scrambled to his feet, unsure of what to do. The other adult tyrannosaur was on the far side of the nest, purring and snorting. The one that had brought him was standing over him.

Dodgson watched the babies moving toward him, with their downy necks and their sharp little jaws. And then he turned to run. In an instant, the big adult brought his head down, knocking Dodgson over. Then the tyrannosaur raised its head again, and waited. Watching.

What the hell is going on? Dodgson thought. Cautiously, he got to his feet again. And again, he was knocked down. The infants squeaked and came closer. He saw that their bodies were covered in bits of flesh and excrement. He could smell them. He got up on all fours, and began crawling away.

Something grabbed his leg, holding him. He looked back and saw that his leg was in the jaws of the tyrannosaur. The big animal held it gently for a moment. Then it bit down decisively. The bones snapped and crunched.

Dodgson screamed in pain. He could no longer move. He could no longer do anything but scream. The babies toddled forward eagerly. For a few seconds they kept their distance, heads darting forward to take quick bites. But then, when Dodgson did not move away, one hopped up on his leg, and began to bite at the bleeding flesh. The second jumped on his crotch, and pecked with razor-sharp jaws at his waist.

The third came right alongside his face, and with a single snap bit into his cheek. Dodgson howled. He saw the baby eating the flesh of his own face. His blood was dripping down its jaws. The baby threw its head back and swallowed the cheek, and then turned, opened its jaws again, and closed over Dodgson’s neck.

SEVENTH CONFIGURATION

“Partial restabilization may occur after eliminating destructive elements. Survival partly determined by chance events.”

IAN MALCOLM

Departure

The boat left the jungle river behind, and moved into darkness. The walls of the cave echoed the throb of the engines as Thorne steered the boat through the swift tidal current. To their left, a waterfall splashed down, a ray of light on cascading water. And then they burst out, moving beyond the high cliff wall and the crashing surf, into the open ocean. Kelly gave a cheer, and threw her arms around Arby, who winced and smiled.

Levine looked back at the island. “I have to admit, I never thought we’d make it. But with our cameras in place, and the uplink working, I expect we can continue to gather the data, until we finally get our answer about extinction.”

Sarah Harding stared at him. “Maybe we will, and maybe we won’t.”

“Why not? It’s a perfect Lost World.”

She stared at him in disbelief. “It’s nothing of the sort,” she said. “Too many predators, remember?”

“Well, so it may appear, but we don’t know—”

“Richard,” she said. “Ian and I checked the records. They made a mistake on that island, many years ago. Back when the lab was still in production.”

“What mistake?”

“They were manufacturing infant dinosaurs, and they didn’t know what to feed them. For a while they gave them goat’s milk, which was fine. It’s very hypoallergenic. But as the carnivores grew, they fed them a special animal-protein extract. And the extract was made from ground-up sheep.”

Levine said, “So? What’s wrong with that?”

“In a zoo, they never use sheep extract,” she said. “Because of the danger of infection.”

“Infection,” Levine repeated, in a low voice. “What kind of infection?”

“Prions,” Malcolm said, from the other side of the boat.

Levine looked blank.

“Prions,” Harding said, “are the simplest disease-causing entities known, even simpler than viruses. They’re just protein fragments. They’re so simple, they can’t even invade a body—they have to be passively ingested. But once eaten, they cause disease: scrapie, in sheep; mad-cow disease; and kuru, a brain disease in human beings. And the dinosaurs developed a prion-disease called DX, from a bad batch of sheep protein extract. The lab battled it for years, trying to get rid of it.”

“You’re saying they didn’t?”

“For a while, it seemed as if they did. The dinosaurs were flourishing. But then something happened. The disease began to spread. The prions are excreted in feces, so it is possible—”

“Excreted in feces?” Levine said. “The compys were eating feces.…”

“Yes, the compys are all infected. The compys are scavengers; they spread the protein over carcasses, and other scavengers became infected. Eventually, all the raptors were infected. Raptors attack healthy animals, not always successfully. One bite, and the animal becomes infected. And so, bit by bit, the infection spread through the island again. That’s why the animals die early. And the rapid die-off supports a much larger predator population than you would expect—”

Levine was visibly anxious. “You know,” he said, “one of the compys bit me.”

“I wouldn’t worry,” Harding said. “There may be a mild encephalitis, but it’s usually just a headache. We’ll get you to a doctor in San José.”

Levine began to sweat. He wiped his forehead with his hand. “Actually, I don’t feel very good at all.”

“It takes a week, Richard,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

Levine sank back in his seat unhappily.

“But the point,” she said, “is that I doubt this island will be able to tell you very much about extinction.”

Malcolm stared back at the dark cliffs for a moment, and then began to speak. “Maybe that’s the way it should be,” he said. “Because extinction has always been a great mystery. It’s happened five major times on this planet, and not always because of an asteroid. Everyone’s interested in the Cretaceous die-out that killed the dinosaurs, but there were die-outs at the end of the Jurassic and the Triassic as well. They were severe, but they were nothing compared to the Permian extinction, which killed ninety percent of all life on the planet, on the seas and on the land. No one knows why that catastrophe happened. But I wonder if we are the cause of the next one.”

“How is that?” Kelly said.

“Human beings are so destructive,” Malcolm said. “I sometimes think we’re a kind of plague, that will scrub the earth clean. We destroy things so well that I sometimes think, maybe that’s our function. Maybe every few eons, some animal comes along that kills off the rest of the world, clears the decks, and lets evolution proceed to its next phase.”

Kelly shook her head. She turned away from Malcolm and moved up the boat, to sit alongside Thorne.

“Are you listening to all that?” Thorne said. “I wouldn’t take any of it too seriously. It’s just theories. Human beings can’t help making them, but the fact is that theories are just fantasies. And they change. When America was a new country, people believed in something called phlogiston. You know what that is? No? Well, it doesn’t matter, because it wasn’t real anyway. They also believed that four humors controlled behavior. And they believed that the earth was only a few thousand years old. Now we believe the earth is four billion years old, and we believe in photons and electrons, and we think human behavior is controlled by things like ego and self-esteem. We think those beliefs are more scientific and better.”

“Aren’t they?”

Thorne shrugged. “They’re still just fantasies. They’re not real. Have you ever seen a self-esteem? Can you bring me one on a plate? How about a photon? Can you bring me one of those?”

Kelly shook her head. “No, but …”

“And you never will, because those things don’t exist. No matter how seriously people take them,” Thorne said. “A hundred years from now, people will look back at us and laugh. They’ll say, ‘You know what people used to believe? They believed in photons and electrons. Can you imagine anything so silly?’ They’ll have a good laugh, because by then there will be newer and better fantasies.” Thorne shook his head. “And meanwhile, you feel the way the boat moves? That’s the sea. That’s real. You smell the salt in the air? You feel the sunlight on your skin? That’s all real. You see all of us together? That’s real. Life is wonderful. It’s a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn’t really anything else. Now look at that compass, and tell me where south is. I want to go to Puerto Cortés. It’s time for us all to go home.”

Dedication

To Carolyn Conger

Acknowledgments

This novel is entirely fiction, but in writing it, I have drawn on the work of researchers in many different fields. I am especially indebted to the work, and the speculations, of John Alexander, Mark Boguski, Edwin Colbert, John Conway, Philip Currie, Peter Dodson, Niles Eldredge, Stephen Jay Gould, Donald Griffin, John Holland, John Horner, Fred Hoyle, Stuart Kauffman, Christopher Langton, Ernst Mayr, Mary Midgley, John Ostrom, Norman Packard, David Raup, Jeffrey Schank, Manfred Schroeder, George Gaylord Simpson, Bruce Weber, John Wheeler, and David Weishampel.

It remains only to say that the views expressed in this novel are mine, not theirs, and to remind the reader that a century and a half after Darwin, nearly all positions on evolution remain strongly contended, and fiercely debated.

Books by Michael Crichton

The Andromeda Strain
The Terminal Man
The Great Train Robbery
Eaters of the Dead
Congo
Sphere
Travels
Jurassic Park
Rising Sun
The Lost World
Disclosure
Airframe
Timeline

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dragon Teeth: A Novel

Front Matter

Title Page

Cover
Endpaper
Title Page
Introduction
Part I : The Field Trip West
Young Johnson Joins the Field Trip West
Marsh
Learning Photography
Philadelphia
“Ready to Dig for Yale?”
Chicago
Going West
The West
A Night in Cheyenne
Morning in Cheyenne
Cope’s Expedition
West with Cope
Fort Benton
Part II: The Lost World
Night on the Plains
Incidents on the Plains
Badlands
The Indian Village
Bone Country
Around the Fire
Bad Water
Dinner with Cope and Marsh
“Sleep with Your Guns Tonight, Boys”
Moving Camp
The Teeth
Around the Campfire
Leaving the Badlands
Part III: Dragon Teeth
On the Plains
Badlands
Deadwood
Life in Deadwood
The Black Hills Art Gallery
The Army Arrives
Last Day in Deadwood
The Next Day in Deadwood
Emily
Emily’s News
Moving the Bones
A Shootout
The Cheyenne Road
The Second Attack
Red Canyon
Fort Laramie
The Laramie Bone Deal
Cheyenne
Four Meetings
Postscript
Author’s Note
Afterword
Bibliography
About the Author
Also by Michael Crichton
Copyright
About the Publisher

Introduction

As he appears in an early photograph, William Johnson is a handsome young man with a crooked smile and a naive grin. A study in slouching indifference, he lounges against a Gothic building. He is a tall fellow, but his height appears irrelevant to his presentation of himself. The photograph is dated “New Haven, 1875,” and was apparently taken after he had left home to begin studies as an undergraduate at Yale College.

A later photograph, marked “Cheyenne, Wyoming, 1876,” shows Johnson quite differently. His mouth is framed by a full mustache; his body is harder and enlarged by use; his jaw is set; he stands confidently with shoulders squared and feet wide—and ankle-deep in mud. Clearly visible is a peculiar scar on his upper lip, which in later years he claimed was the result of an Indian attack.

The following story tells what happened between the two pictures.

For the journals and notebooks of William Johnson, I am indebted to the estate of W. J. T. Johnson, and particularly to Johnson’s great-niece, Emily Silliman, who permitted me to quote extensively from the unpublished material. (Much of the factual contents of Johnson’s accounts found their way into print in 1890, during the fierce battles for priority between Cope and Marsh, which finally involved the U.S. government. But the text itself, or even excerpts, was never published, until now.)

Part I

Young Johnson Joins the Field Trip West

William Jason Tertullius Johnson, the elder son of Philadelphia shipbuilder Silas Johnson, entered Yale College in the fall of 1875. According to his headmaster at Exeter, Johnson was “gifted, attractive, athletic and able.” But the headmaster added that Johnson was “headstrong, indolent and badly spoilt, with a notable indifference to any motive save his own pleasures. Unless he finds a purpose to his life, he risks unseemly decline into indolence and vice.”

Those words could have served as the description of a thousand young men in late nineteenth-century America, young men with intimidating, dynamic fathers, large quantities of money, and no particular way to pass the time.

William Johnson fulfilled his headmaster’s prediction during his first year at Yale. He was placed on probation in November for gambling, and again in February after an incident involving heavy drinking and the smashing of a New Haven merchant’s window. Silas Johnson paid the bill. Despite such reckless behavior, Johnson remained courtly and even shy with women of his own age, for he had yet to have any luck with them. For their part, they found reason to seek his attention, their formal upbringings notwithstanding. In all other respects, however, he remained unrepentant. Early that spring, on a sunny afternoon, Johnson wrecked his roommate’s yacht, running it aground on Long Island Sound. The boat sank within minutes; Johnson was rescued by a passing trawler; asked what happened, he admitted to the incredulous fishermen that he did not know how to sail because it would be “so utterly tedious to learn. And anyway, it looks simple enough.” Confronted by his roommate, Johnson admitted he had not asked permission to use the yacht because “it was such bother to find you.”

Faced with the bill for the lost yacht, Johnson’s father complained to his friends that “the cost of educating a young gentleman at Yale these days is ruinously expensive.” His father was the serious son of a Scottish immigrant, and took some pains to conceal the excesses of his offspring; in his letters, he repeatedly urged William to find a purpose in life. But William seemed content with his spoiled frivolity, and when he announced his intention to spend the coming summer in Europe, “the prospect,” said his father, “fills me with direst fiscal dread.”

Thus his family was surprised when William Johnson abruptly decided to go west during the summer of 1876. Johnson never publically explained why he had changed his mind. But those close to him at Yale knew the reason. He had decided to go west because of a bet.

In his own words, from the journal he scrupulously kept:

Every young man probably has an arch-rival at some point in his life, and in my first year at Yale, I had mine. Harold Hannibal Marlin was my own age, eighteen. He was handsome, athletic, well-spoken, soaking rich, and he was from New York, which he considered superior to Philadelphia in every respect. I found him insufferable. The sentiment was returned in kind.

Marlin and I competed in every arena—in the classroom, on the playing-field, in the undergraduate pranks of the night. Nothing would exist but that we would compete over it. We argued incessantly, always taking the opposing view from the other.

One night at dinner he said that the future of America lay in the developing West. I said it didn’t, that the future of our great nation could hardly rest on a vast desert populated by savage aboriginal tribes.

He replied I didn’t know what I was talking about, because I hadn’t been there. This was a sore point—Marlin had actually been to the West, at least as far as Kansas City, where his brother lived, and he never failed to express his superiority in this matter of travel.

I had never succeeded in neutralizing it.

“Going west is no shakes. Any fool can go,” I said.

“But all fools haven’t gone—at least you haven’t.”

“I’ve never had the least desire to go,” I said.

“I’ll tell you what I think,” Hannibal Marlin replied, checking to see that the others were listening. “I think you’re afraid.”

“That’s absurd.”

“Oh yes. A nice trip to Europe’s more your way of things.”

“Europe? Europe is for old people and dusty scholars.”

“Mark my word, you’ll tour Europe this summer, perhaps with a parasol.”

“And if I do go, that doesn’t mean—”

“Ah hah! You see?” Marlin turned to address the assembled table. “Afraid. Afraid.” He smiled in a knowing, patronizing way that made me hate him and left me no choice.

“As a matter of fact,” I said coolly, “I am already determined on a trip in the West this summer.”

That caught him by surprise; the smug smile froze on his face. “Oh?”

“Yes,” I said. “I am going with Professor Marsh. He takes a group of students with him each summer.” There had been an advertisement in the paper the previous week; I vaguely remembered it.

“What? Fat old Marsh? The bone professor?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re going with Marsh? Accommodations for his group are Spartan, and they say he works the boys unmercifully. It doesn’t seem your line of things at all.” His eyes narrowed. “When do you leave?”

“He hasn’t told us the date yet.”

Marlin smiled. “You’ve never laid eyes on Professor Marsh, and you’ll never go with him.”

“I will.”

“You won’t.”

“I tell you, it’s already decided.”

Marlin sighed in his patronizing way. “I have a thousand dollars that says you will not go.”

Marlin had been losing the attention of the table, but he got it back with that one. A thousand dollars was a great deal of money in 1876, even from one rich boy to another.

“A thousand dollars says you won’t go west with Marsh this summer,” Marlin repeated.

“You, sir, have made a wager,” I replied. And in that moment I realized that, through no fault of my own, I would now spend the entire summer in some ghastly hot desert in the company of a known lunatic, digging up old bones.

Marsh

Professor Marsh kept offices in the Peabody Museum on the Yale campus. A heavy green door with large white lettering read Prof. O. C. Marsh. Visitors by written appointment only.

Johnson knocked. There was no reply, so he knocked again.

“Go away.”

Johnson knocked a third time.

A small panel opened in the center of the door, and an eye squinted out. “What is it?”

“I want to see Professor Marsh.”

“But does he want to see you?” demanded the eye. “I doubt it.”

“I am replying to his notice.” Johnson held up the newspaper advertisement from the week before.

“Sorry. Too late. Positions all filled.” The door panel snapped shut.

Johnson was not accustomed to being denied anything, particularly a silly trip he did not want in the first place. Angrily, he kicked the door. He stared at the buggy traffic on Whitney Avenue. But with his pride, and a thousand dollars, hanging in the balance, he got control of himself, and knocked politely once more. “I’m sorry, Professor Marsh, but I really must go west with you.”

“Young man, the only place you must go is away. Go away.”

“Please, Professor Marsh. Please let me join your expedition.” The thought of his humiliation before Marlin was awful to Johnson. His voice choked; his eyes watered. “Please hear me out, sir. I’ll do whatever you say, I’ll even provide my own equipment.”

The panel snapped open again. “Young man, everyone provides their own equipment, and everyone does whatever I say, except you. You are presenting an unmanly spectacle.” The eye peered out. “Now go away.”

“Please, sir, you have to take me.”

“If you wanted to come you should have answered the advertisement last week. Everyone else did. We had thirty candidates to choose from last week. Now we have selected everyone except— You’re not, by any chance, a photographer?”

Johnson saw his chance and leapt at it. “A photographer? Yes, sir, I am! I am indeed.”

“Well! You should have said so at once. Come in.” The door swung open wide, and Johnson had his first full look at the heavy, powerful, solemn figure of Othniel C. Marsh, Yale’s first professor of paleontology. Of medium height, he appeared to enjoy a fleshy, robust health.

Marsh led him back into the interior of the museum. The air was chalky and shafts of sunlight pierced it like a cathedral. In a vast cavernous space, Johnson saw men in white lab coats bent over great slabs of rock, chipping bones free with small chisels. They worked carefully, he saw, and used small brushes to clean their work. In the far corner, a gigantic skeleton was being assembled, the framework of bones rising to the ceiling.

“Giganthopus marshiensis, my crowning achievement,” Marsh said, nodding toward the looming beast of bones. “To date, that is. Discovered her in ’74, in the Wyoming Territory. I always think of her as her. What is your name?”

“William Johnson, sir.”

“What does your father do?”

“My father is in shipping, sir.” Chalky dust hung in the air; Johnson coughed.

Marsh looked suspicious. “Are you unwell, Johnson?”

“No, sir, perfectly well.”

“I cannot abide sickness around me.”

“My health is excellent, sir.”

Marsh appeared unconvinced. “How old are you, Johnson?”

“Eighteen, sir.”

“And how long have you been a photographer?”

“A photographer? Oh, uh—from my youth, sir. My, uh—my father took pictures and I learned from him, sir.”

“You have your own equipment?”

“Yes—uh, no, sir—but I can obtain it. From my father, sir.”

“You are nervous, Johnson. Why is that?”

“I’m just eager to go with you, sir.”

“Are you.” Marsh stared at him, as if Johnson were a curious anatomical specimen himself.

Uneasy under that stare, Johnson attempted a compliment. “I’ve heard so many exciting things about you, sir.”

“Indeed? What have you heard?”

Johnson hesitated. In truth, he had heard only that Marsh was an obsessive, driven man who owed his college position to his monomaniacal interest in fossil bones, and to his uncle, the famous philanthropist George Peabody, who had provided the funding for the Peabody Museum, for Marsh’s professorship, and for Marsh’s annual field trips to the West.

“Only that students have found it a privilege and an adventure to accompany you, sir.”

Marsh was silent for a moment. Finally, he said, “I dislike compliments and idle flattery. I don’t like to be called ‘sir.’ You may refer to me as ‘Professor.’ As for privilege and adventure, I offer damned hard work and plenty of it. But I’ll say this: all my students have come back alive and well. Now then—why do you want to go so much?”

“Personal reasons, si— Professor.”

“All reasons are personal reasons, Johnson. I’m asking yours.”

“Well, Professor, I am interested in the study of fossils.”

“You are interested? You say you are interested? Young man, these fossils”—his hand swept wide, gesturing to the room—“these fossils do not invite interest. They invite passionate commitment, they invite religious fervor and scientific speculation, they invite heated discourse and argument, but they do not thrive on mere interest. No, no. I am sorry. No, no, indeed.”

Johnson feared he had lost his opportunity with his chance remark, but in another swift change, Marsh smiled and said, “Never mind, I need a photographer and you are welcome to come.” He extended his hand, and Johnson shook it. “Where are you from, Johnson?”

“Philadelphia.”

The name had an extraordinary effect on Marsh. He dropped Johnson’s hand, and took a step back. “Philadelphia! You—you—you are from Philadelphia?”

“Yes, sir, is there something wrong with Philadelphia?”

“Don’t call me ‘sir’! And your father is in shipping?”

“Yes, he is.”

Marsh’s face turned purple; his body shook with rage. “And I suppose you are a Quaker, too? Hmmm? A Quaker from Philadelphia?”

“No, Methodist, actually.”

“Isn’t that very close to Quaker?”

“I don’t think so.”

“But you live in the same city that he does.”

“That who does?”

Marsh fell silent, frowning, staring at the floor, and then he made another of his abrupt turns, shifting his bulk. For a large man he was surprisingly agile and athletic.

“Never mind,” he said, smiling once again. “I’ve no quarrel with any resident of the City of Brotherly Love, whatever they may say. And yet I imagine you are wondering where my expedition is going this summer, to look for fossils?”

The question had never crossed Johnson’s mind, but to show proper interest, he replied, “I am a bit curious, yes.”

“I imagine you are. Yes. I imagine you are. Well, it is a secret,” Marsh said, leaning close to Johnson’s face and hissing the words. “Do you understand me? A secret. And it will remain a secret, known only to me, until we are on the train headed west. Is that completely understood?”

Johnson backed away under the vehemence of the words. “Yes, Professor.”

“Good. If your family desires to know your destination, tell them Colorado. It isn’t true, for we won’t go to Colorado this year, but that doesn’t matter because you’ll be out of touch anyway, and Colorado is a delightful place not to be. Understood?”

“Yes, Professor.”

“Good. Now then, we depart June 14, from Grand Central Depot in New York. Returning no later than September 1 to the same station. See the museum secretary tomorrow and he will give you a list of provisions you are to provide—in addition, in your case, to your photographic equipment. You will allow supplies sufficient for a hundred photographs. Any questions?”

“No, sir. No, Professor.”

“Then I will see you at the platform on June 14, Mr. Johnson.” They shook hands briefly. Marsh’s hand was damp and cold.

“Thank you, Professor.” Johnson turned and headed toward the door.

“Ah, ah, ah. Where do you think you are going?”

“To leave.”

“By yourself?”

“I can find my way—”

“No one, Johnson, is permitted unescorted movement through this office. I am not a fool, I know there are spies eager to look at the latest drafts of my papers, or the latest bones to emerge from the rock. My assistant Mr. Gall will see you out.” At the mention of his name, a thin, pinched man in a lab coat put down his chisel and walked with Johnson to the door.

“Is he always like this?” Johnson whispered.

“Lovely weather,” Gall said, and smiled. “Good day to you, sir.”

And William Johnson was back out on the street.

Learning Photography

Johnson wanted nothing more than to escape the terms of his wager and this impending expedition. Marsh was obviously a lunatic of the first order, and conceivably dangerous as well. He fixed on having another meal with Marlin, and somehow extricating himself from the bet.

Yet that evening, to his horror, he learned that the wager had become notorious. It was now known broadly throughout the College, and all during dinner people came to his table to talk about it, to make some small comment or joke. Backing out now was inconceivable.

He realized then he was doomed.

The following day he went to the shop of Mr. Carlton Lewis, a local photographer, who offered twenty lessons in his craft for the outrageous sum of fifty dollars. Mr. Lewis was amused with this new pupil; photography was not a rich man’s pursuit, but rather a shifty business for people who lacked the capital to embark on a more prestigious livelihood. Even Mathew Brady, the most famous photographer of his day, the chronicler of the Civil War, the man who photographed statesmen and presidents, had never been treated as anything but a servant by the eminent subjects who sat for him.

But Johnson was adamant, and over a period of weeks he learned the skills behind this method of recording, introduced from France forty years earlier by the telegrapher Samuel Morse.

The process then in vogue was the “wet plate” photographic technique; in a darkened room or tent, fresh chemicals were mixed on the spot, and sheets of glass coated with a sticky, light-sensitive emulsion. The newly made wet plates were then rushed to the camera and exposed to the scene while still wet. Considerable skill was required to prepare an evenly coated plate, and then to expose it before the plate dried; later development was easy by comparison.

Johnson learned with difficulty. He could not carry out the steps fast enough, with the easy rhythms of his teacher; his early emulsions were too thick or too thin, too wet or too dry; his plates had bubbles and dripped densities that made his pictures amateurish. He hated the confined tent, the darkness, and the smelly chemicals that irritated his eyes, stained his fingers, and burned his clothes. Most of all he hated the fact that he couldn’t master the craft easily. And he hated Mr. Lewis, who tended to philosophize.

“You expect everything to be easy because you are rich,” Lewis would chuckle, watching him fumble and swear. “But the plate doesn’t care how rich you are. The chemicals don’t care how rich you are. The lens doesn’t care how rich you are. You must first learn patience, if you wish to learn anything at all.”

“Damn you,” Johnson would say, irritated. The man was nothing but an uneducated shopkeeper putting on airs.

“I am not the problem,” Lewis would reply, taking no offense. “You are the problem. Now come: try again.”

Johnson ground his teeth and swore under his breath.

But as the weeks passed, he did improve. By late April his plates were uniform in density, and he was working swiftly enough to make good exposures. His plates were crisp and sharp, and he was pleased as he showed them to his teacher.

“What are you pleased about?” Mr. Lewis asked. “These pictures are wretched.”

“Wretched? They are perfect.”

“They are technically perfect,” Lewis said, shrugging. “It means merely that you know enough to begin to learn about photography. I believe that is why you came to me in the first place.”

Lewis taught him now the details of exposure, the vagaries of f-stop, focal length, depth of field. Johnson despaired, for there was so much more to learn: “Shoot portraits wide open with short exposures, because the wide-open lens has a soft quality that flatters the subject.” And again, “Shoot landscapes stopped down with long exposures, because people wish to see a landscape sharp both close and at a distance.” He learned to vary contrast by changing exposure and subsequent development time. He learned to position his subjects in the light, to change the composition of his emulsions on bright and dull days. Johnson worked hard and kept detailed notes in his journal—but also complaints.

“I despise this little man,” observes one characteristic entry, “and yet I desperately want to hear him say what he will not: that I have learned this skill.” Yet even in his complaint one notices a change from the haughty young man who a few months earlier could not be bothered to learn to sail. He wanted to excel at his task.

In early May, Lewis held a plate up to the light, then inspected it with a magnifying glass. He finally turned to Johnson. “This work is almost acceptable,” he allowed. “You have done well.”

Johnson was elated. In his journal he wrote: “Almost acceptable! Almost acceptable! Nothing said to me was ever so sweet to my ears!”

Other aspects of Johnson’s demeanor were changing as well: despite himself he was beginning to look forward to the trip.

I still regard three months in the West in much the same way I would three months forced attendance at the German Opera. But I have to admit a pleasurable, growing excitement as the fateful departure approaches. I have acquired everything on the list of the Museum Secretary, including a Bowie knife, a Smith & Wesson six-shot revolver, a .50 caliber rifle, sturdy cavalry boots, and a geologist’s hammer. With each purchase, my excitement grows. I have mastered my photographic techniques passably well; I have acquired the eighty pounds of chemicals and equipment, and the hundred glass plates; I am, in short, ready to go.

Only one major obstacle now stands between me and departure: my family. I must return to Philadelphia, and tell them.

Philadelphia

Philadelphia was the busiest city in America that May, nearly bursting with the vast crowds that flocked to attend the Centennial Exposition of 1876. The excitement that surrounded this celebration of the nation’s hundredth anniversary was nearly palpable. Wandering the soaring exhibition halls, Johnson saw the wonders that astonished all the world—the great Corliss steam engine, the exhibits of plant and agriculture from the states and territories of America, and the new inventions that were all the rage.

The prospect of harnessing the power of electricity was the newest subject: there was even talk of making electrical light, to illuminate city streets at night; everyone said Edison would have a solution within a year. Meanwhile there were other electrical wonders to puzzle over, particularly the curious device of the tele-phone.

Everyone who attended the exposition saw this oddity, although few considered it of any value. Johnson was among the majority when he noted in his journal, “We already have the telegraph, providing communications for all who desire it. The added virtues of voice communication at a distance are unclear. Perhaps in the future, some people will wish to hear the voice of another far away, but there cannot be many. For myself, I think Mr. Bell’s tele-phone is a doomed curiosity with no real purpose.”

Despite the splendid buildings and enormous crowds, all was not entirely well in the nation. This was an election year, with much talk of politics. President Ulysses S. Grant had opened the Centennial Exposition, but the little general was no longer popular; scandal and corruption characterized his administration, and the excesses of financial speculators had finally plunged the nation into one of the most severe depressions in its history. Thousands of investors had been ruined on Wall Street; Western farmers were destroyed by the sharp decline in prices, as well as by harsh winters and plagues of grasshoppers; the resurgent Indian Wars in the Montana, Dakota, and Wyoming Territories provided an unsavory aspect, at least to the Eastern press, and both Democratic and Republican parties promised in this year’s campaign to focus on reform.

But to a young man, particularly a rich one, all this news—both good and bad—merely formed an exciting backdrop on the eve of his great adventure. “I relished the wonders of this Exposition,” Johnson wrote, “but in truth I found it wearingly civilized. My eyes looked to the future, and to the Great Plains that would soon be my destination. If my family agreed to let me go.”

The Johnsons resided in one of the ornate mansions that fronted Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square. It was the only home William had ever known—lavish furnishings, mannered elegance, and servants behind every door. He decided to tell his family one morning at breakfast. In retrospect, he found their reactions absolutely predictable.

“Oh, darling! Why ever would you want to go out there?” asked his mother, buttering her toast.

“I think it’s a capital idea,” said his father. “Excellent.”

“But do you think it’s wise, William?” asked his mother. “There’s all that trouble with the Indians, you know.”

“It’s good that he’s going, maybe they’ll scalp him,” announced his younger brother, Edward, who was fourteen. He said things like that all the time and no one paid any attention.

“I don’t understand the appeal,” his mother said again, an edge of worry in her voice. “Why do you want to go? It doesn’t make any sense. Why not go to Europe instead? Someplace culturally stimulating and safe.”

“I’m sure he’ll be safe,” his father said. “Only today the Inquirer reports on the Sioux uprising in the Dakotas. They’ve sent Custer himself to put it down. He’ll make short work of them.”

“I hate to think of you eaten,” said his mother.

“Scalped, Mother,” Edward corrected her. “They cut off all the hair right around the head, after they club you to death, of course. Except sometimes you’re not completely dead and you can feel the knife cutting off the skin and hair right down to the eyebrows—”

“Not at breakfast, Edward.”

“You’re disgusting, Edward,” said his sister, Eliza, who was ten. “You make me puke.”

“Eliza!”

“Well, he does, Mother. He is a revolting creature.”

“Where exactly will you go with Professor Marsh, son?” his father asked.

“To Colorado.”

“Isn’t that near the Dakotas?” asked his mother.

“Not very.”

“Oh, Mother, don’t you know anything?” said Edward.

“Are there Indians in Colorado?”

“There are Indians everywhere, Mother.”

“I wasn’t asking you, Edward.”

“I believe no hostile Indians reside in Colorado,” his father said. “They say it’s a lovely place. Very dry.”

“They say it’s a desert,” said his mother. “And dreadfully inhospitable. What sort of hotel will you stay in?”

“We’ll be camping, mostly.”

“Good,” his father said. “Plenty of fresh air and exertion. Invigorating.”

“You sleep on the ground with all the snakes and animals and insects? It sounds horrific,” his mother said.

“Summer in the out-of-doors, good for a young man,” his father said. “After all, many sickly boys go for the ‘camp cure’ nowadays.”

“I suppose . . .” said his mother. “But William isn’t sickly. Why do you want to go, William?”

“I think it’s time I made something of myself,” William told her, surprised by his own honesty.

“Well said!” said his father, pounding the table.

In the end his mother gave her consent, although she continued to look genuinely worried. He thought she was being maternal and foolish; the fears she expressed only made him feel all the more puffed-up, brave, and determined to go.

He might have felt differently, had he known that by late summer, she would be informed that her firstborn son was dead.

“Ready to Dig for Yale?”

The train left at eight o’clock in the evening from the cavernous interior of the Grand Central Depot in New York. Finding his way through the station, Johnson passed several attractive young women accompanied by their families, but could not quite bring himself to meet their curious eyes. Meanwhile, he told himself, he needed to find his party. Altogether, twelve Yale students would accompany Professor Marsh and his staff of two, Mr. Gall and Mr. Bellows.

Marsh was there early, walking down the line of cars, greeting everyone the same way: “Hello, young fellow, ready to dig for Yale?” Ordinarily taciturn and suspicious, Marsh was here outgoing and friendly. Marsh had handpicked his students from socially prominent and wealthy families, and these families had come to see their boys off.

Marsh was well aware that he was serving as a tour guide to the scions of the rich, who might later be properly grateful for his part in turning their young boys into men. He understood further that since many prominent ministers and theologians explicitly denounced ungodly paleontological research, all research money in his field came from private patrons, among them his financier uncle, George Peabody. Here in New York, the new American Museum of Natural History in Central Park had just been chartered by other self-made men such as Andrew Carnegie, J. Pierpont Morgan, and Marshall Field.

For as eagerly as religious men sought to discredit the doctrine of evolution, so wealthy men sought to promote it. In the principle of the survival of the fittest they saw a new, scientific justification for their own rise to prominence, and their own often unscrupulous way of life. After all, no less an authority than the great Charles Lyell, friend and forerunner of Charles Darwin, had insisted again and again, “In the universal struggle for existence, the right of the strongest eventually prevails.”

Here Marsh found himself surrounded by the children of the strongest. Marsh privately maintained to Bellows that “the New York send-off is the most productive part of the field trip,” and his thinking was firmly in mind when he greeted Johnson with his usual “Hello, young man, ready to dig for Yale?”

Johnson was surrounded by a cluster of porters who loaded his bulky photographic equipment aboard. Marsh looked about, then frowned. “Where is your family?”

“In Philadelphia, si— Professor.”

“Your father did not come to see you off?” Marsh recalled that Johnson’s father was in shipping. Marsh did not know much about shipping, but it was undoubtedly lucrative and full of sharp practices. Fortunes were made daily in shipping.

“My father saw me off in Philadelphia.”

“Really? Most families wish to meet me personally, to get a sense of the expedition . . .”

“Yes, I am sure, but you see, they felt to come here would strain—my mother—who does not completely approve.”

“Your mother does not approve?” Marsh could not conceal the distress in his voice. “Does not approve of what? Surely not of me . . .”

“Oh no. It’s the Indians, Professor. She disapproves of my going west, because she is afraid of the Indians.”

Marsh huffed. “She obviously knows nothing of my background. I am widely respected as the intimate friend of the red man. We’ll have no trouble with Indians, I promise you.”

But the situation was altogether unsatisfactory for Marsh, who later muttered to Bellows that Johnson “looks older than the others,” and hinted darkly that “perhaps he is not a student at all. And his father is in shipping. I think nothing more need be said.”

The whistle blew, there were final kisses and waves for the students, and the train pulled out of the station.

Marsh had arranged for them to travel in a private car, provided by none other than Commodore Vanderbilt himself, now a whitened eighty-two-year-old tucked into his sickbed. It was the first of many agreeable comforts that Marsh had arranged for the trip through his extensive connections with the army, the government, and captains of industry such as Vanderbilt.

In his prime, the crusty Commodore, a hulking figure in a fur coat worn winter and summer, had been admired by all New York. With ruthless and aggressive instincts, as well as a sharply profane tongue, this uneducated Staten Island Ferry boy, the son of Dutch peasants, had come to control shipping lines from New York to San Francisco; later he took an interest in railroads, extending his mighty New York Central from the heart of New York all the way to burgeoning Chicago. He was always good copy, even in defeat; when the secretive Jay Gould bested him for control of the Erie railway, he announced, “This Erie war has taught me that it never pays to kick a skunk.” And on another occasion, his complaint to his lawyers—“What do I care for the law? Haint I got the power?”—had made him a legend.

In later years Vanderbilt became increasingly eccentric, given to fraternizing with clairvoyants and mesmerists, communing with the dead, often on pressing business matters; and though he patronized outrageous feminists such as Victoria Woodhull, he still chased girls a quarter of his age.

Some days before, New York newspaper headlines had proclaimed “VANDERBILT DYING!,” which had roused the old man out of bed to bellow at reporters: “I am not dying! Even if I was dying I should have vigor enough to knock this abuse down your lying throats!” At least, this was what the journalists reported, though everyone in America knew the Commodore’s language was considerably saltier.

Vanderbilt’s railway car was the last word in elegance and modernity; there were Tiffany lamps, china and crystal service, as well as the clever new sleeper beds invented by George Pullman. By now, Johnson had met the other students, and noted in his journal they were “a bit tedious and spoiled, but all in all, an adventure-seeking lot. Yet we all share a common fear—of Professor Marsh.”

It was clear, seeing Marsh stride commandingly about the railway car, now sinking into the plush banquette seats to smoke a cigar, now snapping his fingers for the servant to bring him an iced drink, that he imagined himself as suited to these surroundings. And indeed, the newspapers sometimes referred to him as the “Baron of Bones,” just as Carnegie was the Baron of Steel, and Rockefeller the Baron of Oil.

Like these other great figures, Marsh was self-made. The son of a New York farmer, he had early shown an interest in fossils and learning. Despite the ridicule of his family, he had attended Phillips Academy Andover, graduating at the age of twenty-nine with high honors and the nickname “Daddy Marsh.” From Andover he went to Yale, and from Yale to England to plead support from his philanthropic uncle, George Peabody. His uncle admired learning in all forms, and was pleased to see a member of his family taking up an academic life. He gave Othniel Marsh the funds to start the Peabody Museum at Yale. The only catch was that Peabody later gave a similar sum to Harvard, to start another Peabody Museum there. This was because Marsh espoused Darwinism, and George Peabody disapproved of such irreligious sentiments. Harvard was the home of Louis Agassiz, an eminent zoology professor who opposed Darwin’s ideas, and was thus a stronghold of the anti-evolutionists—Harvard would provide a useful corrective to the excesses of his nephew, Peabody felt. All this Johnson learned in whispered conversation in the rocking Pullman bunks that night, before the excited students dropped off to sleep.

By morning they were in Rochester, by midday in Buffalo, waiting expectantly for a look at Niagara Falls. Unfortunately, their one glimpse, from a bridge some distance downstream, was anticlimactic. But their disappointment quickly vanished when they were informed that Professor Marsh expected to see them all in his private stateroom at once.

Marsh peered up and down the hallway, closed the door, and locked it from the inside. Though the afternoon was warm, he closed all the windows and locked them, too. Only then did he turn to the twelve waiting students.

“You have undoubtedly wondered where we are going,” he said. “But it is too early to inform you yet; I will tell you after Chicago. In the meantime, I caution you to avoid contact with strangers, and to say nothing of our plans. He has spies everywhere.”

Tentatively, one student said, “Who does?”

“Cope, of course!” Marsh snapped.

Hearing this unfamiliar name, the students looked blankly at each other, but Marsh did not notice; he was off on a tirade. “Gentlemen, I cannot warn you against him too strongly. Professor Edward Drinker Cope may pretend to be a scientist, but in fact he is little better than a common thief and keyhole-peeper. I have never known him to obtain by fair labor what he could steal instead. The man is a despicable liar and sneak. Be on your guard.”

Marsh was puffing, as if exerted. He glared around the room. “Any questions?”

There were none.

“All right,” Marsh said. “I merely want the record straight. You will hear more after Chicago. Meantime, keep to yourselves.”

Bewildered, the students filed out of the compartment.

One young man named Winslow knew who Cope was. “He is another professor of paleontology, I believe at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. He and Marsh were once friends, but are now the most steadfast enemies. As I heard it, Cope tried to steal credit for the professor’s first fossil discoveries, and there has been bad feeling between them ever since. And Cope apparently pursued a woman Marsh wanted to marry, and discredited her, or at least sullied her reputation. Cope’s father was a wealthy Quaker merchant, left him millions, I was told. So Cope does as he pleases. It seems he is a bit of a rogue and charlatan. There’s no end of sly tricks he will pull to steal from Marsh what is rightfully his. That’s why Marsh is so suspicious—he is ever on the watch for Cope and his agents.”

“I knew nothing of this,” Johnson said.

“Well, you know now,” Winslow responded. He stared out the window at rolling green cornfields. The train had left New York State, passed through Pennsylvania, and was in Ohio. “Speaking for myself,” he said, “I don’t know why you are on this expedition. I’d never go except my family made me. My father insists that a summer in the West will ‘put hair on my chest.’” He shook his head in wonder. “God. All I can think of is, three months of bad food and bad water and bad insects. And no girls. No fun. God.”

Still curious about Cope, Johnson asked Marsh’s assistant Bellows, a pinch-faced zoology instructor. Bellows immediately became suspicious. “Why do you ask?”

“I am simply curious.”

“But why do you, particularly, ask? None of the other students have asked.”

“Perhaps they are not interested.”

“Perhaps they have no reason to be interested.”

“That amounts to the same thing,” Johnson said.

“Does it?” Bellows asked, with a meaningful look. “I ask you, does it really?”

“Well, I think so,” Johnson said, “although I’m not sure, the conversation has become so convoluted.”

“Don’t patronize me, young man,” Bellows said. “You may think I am a fool—you may think we are all fools—but I assure you we are not.”

And he walked off, leaving Johnson more curious than ever.

Marsh’s diary entry:

Bellows reports student W.J. has asked about Cope! The audacity, the nerve! He must think we are fools! Am very angry! Angry! Angry!!!!

Our suspicions about W.J. obviously confirmed. Phila. background—the shipping background, etc.—Only too clear. Will speak with W.J. tomorrow, and set the stage for later developments. I will see that this young man causes us no trouble.

The farmlands of Indiana raced past the window, mile after mile, hour after hour, lulling Johnson to a sense of monotony. With his chin propped on his hand, he was drifting off to sleep when Marsh said, “What exactly do you know about Cope?”

Johnson sat up abruptly. “Nothing, Professor.”

“Well, I’ll tell you some things that perhaps you don’t know. He killed his own father to get his inheritance. Did you know that?”

“No, Professor.”

“Not six months ago, he killed him. And he cheats on his wife, an invalided woman who has never harmed him in the least way—worships him, in fact, that’s how deluded the poor creature is.”

“He sounds a complete criminal.”

Marsh shot him a look. “You don’t believe me?”

“I believe you, Professor.”

“Also, personal hygiene is not his strong point. The man is odiferous and unsanitary. But I’ve no wish to be personal.”

“No, Professor.”

“The fact is he is unscrupulous and untrustworthy in the extreme. There was a landgrab and mineral rights scandal. That’s why he was kicked out of the Geological Survey.”

“He was kicked out of the Geological Survey?”

“Years ago. You don’t believe me?”

“I believe you, Professor.”

“Well, you don’t look like you believe me.”

“I believe you,” Johnson insisted. “I believe you.”

There was a silence. The train clattered on. Marsh cleared his throat. “Do you know Professor Cope, by any chance?”

“No, I don’t.”

“I thought perhaps you did.”

“No, Professor.”

“If you did know him, you would feel better if you told me all about it now,” Marsh said. “Instead of waiting.”

“If I did, Professor,” Johnson said, “I would. But I do not know the man.”

“Yes,” Marsh said, studying Johnson’s face. “Hmmm.”

Later that day, Johnson met a painfully thin young man making notes in a small leather-bound book. He was from Scotland and said his name was Louis Stevenson.

“How far are you going?” Johnson asked.

“All the way to the end. California,” Stevenson said, lighting another cigarette. He smoked continually; his long, delicate fingers were stained dark brown. He coughed a great deal, and in general did not look like the sort of robust person who seeks a journey west, and Johnson asked him why he was doing so.

“I am in love,” Stevenson said simply. “She is in California.”

And then he made more notes, and seemed to forget Johnson for a time. Johnson went off in search of more congenial company, and came across Marsh.

“That young man there,” Marsh said, nodding across the carriage.

“What about him?”

“You were talking to him.”

“His name is Stevenson.”

“I don’t trust a man who makes notes,” Marsh said. “What did you talk about?”

“He’s from Scotland and he is going to California to find a woman he is in love with.”

“How romantic. And did he ask you where you were going?”

“No, he wasn’t the least interested.”

Marsh squinted at him. “So he says.”

“I have made inquiries about that Stevenson fellow,” Marsh announced to the group later. “He’s from Scotland, on his way to California to find a woman. His health is poor. Apparently he fancies himself a writer, that’s why he makes all those notes.”

Johnson said nothing.

“Just thought you would be interested to know,” Marsh said. “Personally, I think he smokes too much.”

Marsh looked out the window. “Ah, the lake,” he said. “We will soon be in Chicago.”

Chicago

Chicago was the fastest-growing city in the world, both in population and in commercial importance. From a prairie village of four thousand in 1840, it had exploded into a metropolis of half a million, and was now doubling in size every five years. Known as “Slabtown” and “The Mud Hole of the Prairie,” the city now extended across thirty-five square miles along Lake Michigan, and boasted paved streets and sidewalks, broad thoroughfares with streetcars, elegant mansions, fine shops, hotels, art galleries, and theaters. And this despite the fact that most of the city had been razed in a terrible fire just five years before.

Chicago’s success owed nothing to climate and locale; the shores of Lake Michigan were swampy; most of the early buildings had sunk into the mud until they were jacked up by the brilliant young Chicago engineer George Pullman. Water was so polluted that visitors often found small fish in their drinking water—there were even minnows in dairy milk. And the weather was abhorrent: hot in summer, brutally cold in winter, and windy in all seasons.

Chicago owed its success to its geographical position in the heartland of the country, to its importance as a rail and shipping center, and most particularly to its preeminence in the handling of prodigious tonnages of beef and pork.

“I like to turn bristles, blood, and the inside and outside of pigs and bullocks into revenue,” said Philip Armour, one of the founders of the gigantic Chicago stockyards. Along with fellow meatpacking magnate Gustavus Swift, Armour ruled an industry that dispatched a million head of cattle and four million pigs each year—and which employed one-sixth of the population of the city. With their centralized distribution, mechanized slaughter, and refrigerated railroad cars, the barons of Chicago were creating a whole new industry—food processing.

The Chicago stockyards were the largest in the world, and many visitors went to see them. One of the Yale students was the nephew of Swift, and they went off to tour the yards, which Johnson regarded as a dubious tourist attraction. But Marsh was not stopping in Chicago for tourism. He was there on business.

From the magnificent Lake Shore Railroad Depot, he took his charges to the nearby Grand Pacific Hotel. Here the students were awed by one of the largest and most elegant hotels in the world. As everywhere, Marsh had arranged special accommodations for his party, and there were newspapermen waiting to interview him.

Othniel Marsh was always good copy. The year before, in 1875, he had uncovered a scandal in the Indian Bureau, whereby bureau officers were not dispensing food and funds to the reservations, but were instead keeping the proceeds for themselves, while Indians literally starved. Marsh had been informed of this by Red Cloud himself, the legendary Sioux chief, and had revealed the evidence in Washington, severely embarrassing the Grant presidency in the eyes of the liberal Eastern establishment. Marsh was a good friend of Red Cloud, and thus reporters wanted to talk to him about the Sioux Wars now raging. “It is a terrible conflict,” Marsh said, “but there are no easy answers to the Indian question.”

Then, too, Chicago reporters never tired of repeating the story of Marsh’s earliest public exploit, the affair of the Cardiff giant.

In 1869, the fossilized skeleton of a ten-foot giant was unearthed in Cardiff, New York, and quickly became a national phenomenon. It was generally agreed that the giant was one of a race of men who had been drowned in Noah’s flood; Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald and a number of scholars had pronounced it genuine.

Marsh, in his capacity as the new paleontology professor from Yale, went to view the fossil and said, within earshot of a reporter, “Very remarkable.”

“May I quote you?” said the reporter.

“Yes,” said Marsh. “You may quote me as saying, ‘A very remarkable fake.’”

It was later determined that the so-called giant originated as a block of gypsum, carved secretly in Chicago. But the incident brought national attention to Marsh—and he had been talking to reporters ever since.

“And what brings you to Chicago now?” one reporter asked.

“I am on my way west, to find more bones,” Marsh said.

“And will you be seeing bones in Chicago?”

Marsh laughed. “No,” he said, “in Chicago we will see General Sheridan, to arrange our army liaison.”

Marsh took Johnson with him, because he wanted to be photographed with General Sheridan.

Little Phil Sheridan was a compact, energetic man of forty-five, with a fondness for plug tobacco and tart expression. He had assembled the army staff now waging the Indian War—Generals Crook, Terry, and Custer, all of whom were in the field, hunting out the Sioux. Sheridan was particularly fond of Armstrong Custer, and had risked the disapproval of President Grant by ordering Custer back into service along with Generals Crook and Terry in the Indian Wars.

“It’s no easy campaign,” Sheridan said. “And we need a man with Custer’s dash. The Indians are being driven from their homes, whether we care to see it that way or not, and they’ll fight us like devils. And the fact that the Indian agency supplies ’em with good rifles doesn’t help, either. The main conflict promises to be in Montana and Wyoming.”

“Wyoming,” Marsh said. “Hmmm. Will there be problems for our group?” He did not seem the least perturbed, Johnson noticed.

“I can’t see why,” Sheridan said, spitting with remarkable accuracy at a metal basin across the room. “So long as you stay out of Wyoming and Montana, you’ll be safe enough.”

Marsh posed for a photograph, standing rigidly beside General Sheridan. He then obtained letters of introduction to the three generals, and to the post commanders at Fort Laramie and Cheyenne. Two hours later, they were back at the train station, ready to continue westward.

At the departure gate, a rough-looking man, very tall, with a peculiar slanting scar on his cheek, said to Johnson, “How far are you going?”

“I’m on my way to Wyoming.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he remembered he should have said Colorado instead.

“Wyoming! Good luck to you then,” the man said, and turned away.

Marsh was beside Johnson a moment later. “Who was that?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“What did he want?”

“He asked how far I was going.”

“Did he? And what did you say?”

“Wyoming.”

Marsh frowned. “Did he believe you?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“Did he seem to believe you?”

“Yes, Professor. I think so.”

“You think so?”

“I am fairly sure, Professor.”

Marsh stared off in the direction of the departed man. The station was still crowded and busy. The echoing din was loud, pierced by departure whistles.

“I have already warned you about talking to strangers,” he said finally. “The man you spoke to was Cope’s favorite foreman, Navy Joe Benedict. A brutal thug of a human specimen. But if you told him we were going to Wyoming, that is all right.”

“You mean we are not going to Wyoming?”

“No,” Marsh said. “We are going to Colorado.”

“Colorado!”

“Of course,” Marsh said. “Colorado is the best source of bones in the West, though you can’t expect a fool like Cope to know it.”

Going West

The Chicago and North Western Railway carried them across the Mississippi at Clinton, Iowa, over a twelve-span iron bridge nearly a mile long. The students were excited to cross the largest river in America, but once its great muddy expanse was behind them, their lethargy returned. Iowa was a region of rolling farmlands, with few landmarks and points of interest. Dry heat blew in through the windows, along with an occasional insect or butterfly. A dreary, perspiring tedium settled over the party.

Johnson hoped to glimpse Indians, but saw none. A passenger beside him laughed. “There haven’t been Indians here for forty years, since the Black Hawk War. You want Indians, you have to go west.”

“Isn’t this the West?” Johnson asked.

“Not yet. ’Cross the Missouri.”

“When do we cross the Missouri?”

“Other side of Cedar Rapids. Half a day on.”

But already the open prairie, and the fact of having crossed the Mississippi, had an effect on passengers. At each station and refueling stop, men would step onto the platform and fire their pistols at prairie dogs and prairie fowl. The birds would go screeching into the air; the little rodents would dive for cover, chattering. Nobody ever hit anything.

“Yep,” said one passenger. “They’re feeling the wide-open spaces now.”

Johnson found the wide-open spaces extraordinarily tedious. The students amused themselves as best they could with cards and dominoes, but it was a losing battle. For a while, they would get out at each station and walk around, but eventually even the stations became monotonously the same, and they usually remained inside.

At Cedar Rapids, the train stopped for two hours, and Johnson decided to stretch his legs. Rounding the corner of the tiny station, which stood at the edge of wheat fields, he saw Marsh talking quietly to the scarred man—Cope’s man, Navy Joe Benedict. Their manner seemed familiar. After a time, Marsh reached in his pocket and handed something to Benedict; Johnson saw a flash of gold in the sunlight. He ducked behind the corner before being spotted and hurried back to the train.

When the train resumed, Johnson’s perplexity increased as Marsh immediately came to sit beside him.

“I wonder where Cope will go this summer?” Marsh said, as if thinking aloud.

Johnson said nothing.

“I wonder where Cope will go?” Marsh said again.

“Very good question,” Johnson said.

“I doubt that he, like us, is going to Colorado.”

“I wouldn’t know.” Johnson was beginning to tire of this game, and allowed himself to stare directly into Marsh’s eyes, holding his gaze.

“Of course not,” Marsh said quickly. “Of course not.”

They crossed the Missouri in early evening at Council Bluffs, the terminus for the Chicago and North Western Railway. Across the bridge, on the Omaha side, the Union Pacific Railroad took over and continued all the way to San Francisco. The Union Pacific depot was a great open shed, and it was packed with travelers of the rudest sort. Here were rugged men, painted women, border ruffians, pickpockets, soldiers, crying children, food vendors, barking dogs, thieves, grandparents, gunfighters—a great confused mass of humanity, all fairly glowing with the fever of speculation.

“Black Hillers,” Marsh explained. “They outfit here before they go to Cheyenne and Fort Laramie, and from there travel northward to the Black Hills in search for gold.”

The students, impatient for a taste of the “real West,” were delighted, and imagined that they, too, had become more real themselves.

But despite the fevered excitement, Johnson found the sight sad. In his journal he recorded, “The hopes of humanity for wealth and fame, or at least for creature comfort, can delude them so easily! For surely only a handful of the people here will find what they are seeking. And the rest will meet with disappointment, hardship, sickness, and perhaps death from starvation, Indians, or marauding robbers who prey on the hopeful, questing pioneers.”

And he added the ironic note: “I am most heartily glad that I am not going to the dangerous and uncertain Black Hills.”

The West

Beyond Omaha the real West began, and aboard the train, everyone felt renewed excitement, tempered by the advice of older travelers. No, they would not see buffalo—in the seven years since the transcontinental rail lines opened, the buffalo had disappeared from view along the rail side, and indeed the legendary great herds of animals were fast disappearing altogether.

But then came the electrifying cry: “Indians!”

They ran to the opposite side of the car, pressed their faces to the glass. They saw three teepees in the distance, surrounded by a half dozen ponies and dark silhouetted figures, standing and watching the train go by. Then the Indians were gone, vanished behind a hill.

“What tribe are those?” Johnson asked. He was sitting next to Marsh’s assistant Gall.

“Pawnee, probably,” Gall said indifferently.

“Are they hostile?”

“Can be.”

Johnson thought of his mother. “Will we see more Indians?”

“Oh yes,” Gall said. “Lots of ’em where we’re going.”

“Really?”

“Yes, and probably riled up, too. There’s going to be a full-on Sioux War over the Black Hills.”

The federal government had signed a treaty with the Sioux in 1868, and as part of that treaty, the Dakota Sioux retained exclusive rights to the Black Hills, a landscape sacred to them. “That treaty was unnecessarily favorable to the Sioux,” Gall said. “The government even agreed to remove all forts and army outposts in the region.”

And it was a huge region, for in 1868, the Wyoming, Montana, and Dakota Territories still seemed distant and unapproachable wilderness. No one in Washington had understood how quickly the West would open up. Yet one year after the treaty had been signed, the transcontinental railroads began service, providing access in days to land that could previously be reached only by weeks of difficult overland travel.

Even so, the Sioux lands might have been respected had not Custer discovered gold during a routine survey in the Black Hills in 1874. News of gold fields, coming in the midst of a nationwide recession, was irresistible.

“Even in the best times, there’s no way to keep men from gold,” Gall said. “And that’s a plain fact.”

Although forbidden by the government, prospectors sneaked into the sacred Black Hills. The army mounted expeditions in ’74 and ’75 to chase them out, and the Sioux killed them whenever they found them. But still the prospectors came, in ever increasing numbers.

Believing the treaty had been broken, the Sioux went on the warpath. In May of 1876, the government ordered the army to quell the Sioux uprising.

“Then the Indians are in the right?” Johnson asked.

Gall shrugged. “You can’t stop progress, and that’s a plain fact.”

“We will be near the Black Hills?”

Gall nodded. “Near enough.”

Johnson’s understanding of geography, always vague, allowed his imagination free rein. He stared out at the wide-stretching plains, which seemed suddenly more desolate and unappealing.

“How often do Indians attack white people?”

“Well, they’re unpredictable,” Gall said. “Like wild animals, you never know what they’ll do, because they’re savages.”

West of Omaha the train climbed steadily and imperceptibly as it entered the high plains leading to the Rocky Mountains. They saw more animals now—prairie dogs, the occasional antelope, and coyotes loping in the distance near sunset. The towns became smaller, more desolate: Fremont, Kearney Junction, Alkali, Ogallala, Julesburg, and finally the notorious Sidney, where the conductor warned the students not to get off “if they valued their lives.”

Of course they all got off to look.

What they saw was a line of wooden storefronts, a town composed, wrote Johnson, “almost entirely of outfitters, stables, and saloons, and doing a brisk commerce in all three. Sidney was the town nearest to the Black Hills, and it was filled with emigrants, most of whom found prices outrageously high. The town’s reputation for murder and cut-throat life was not demonstrated to us, but then we had only stopped an hour.”

But they were not long disappointed, because the Union Pacific train was now speeding them westward to a still more notorious locus of vice and crime: Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory.

Travelers loaded their six-shooters coming into Cheyenne. And the conductor took Marsh aside to recommend that his party hire a guard, to see them safely through the town.

“Such preliminaries,” wrote Johnson, “gave us a most pleasurable nervous anticipation, for we imagined a lawless wild place which proved to be just that—a figment of our imaginations.”

Cheyenne turned out to be a rather orderly and settled place, with many brick buildings among those of wood-frame construction, but it was not entirely peaceful. Cheyenne boasted one schoolhouse, two theaters, five churches, and twenty gambling saloons. A contemporary observer wrote that “gambling in Cheyenne, far from being merely an amusement or recreation, rises to the dignity of a legitimate occupation—the pursuit of nine-tenths of the population, both permanent and transient.”

Gambling halls were open around the clock, and provided the major source of revenue to the town. Some indication of the business they did can be judged from the fact that the proprietors paid the city a license of $600 per year for each table, and each saloon had six to twelve green baize tables going at once.

The enthusiasm for gambling was not lost on the students, as they checked into the Inter-Ocean Hotel in Cheyenne, where Marsh had previously arranged a special rate. Although the best hotel in town, it was, noted Johnson, “a cockroach-infested dump, where the rats scurry up and down the walls, squeaking at all hours.” Nevertheless, each student was given a private room, and after soaking in hot baths, they were ready for a night on the town.

A Night in Cheyenne

Timid, they set forth as a group—twelve earnest young down-Easters, still wearing their high collars and bowler hats, strolling from saloon to saloon with as much nonchalance as they could muster. For the town, which had appeared disappointingly tame by day, assumed a positively sinister aspect at night.

In the yellow light of the saloon windows, the boardwalk crowd of cowboys, gunmen, gamblers, and cutthroats looked at them with amusement. “These varmints’d kill you as soon as smile at you,” said one student melodramatically. Feeling the unfamiliar weight of their new Smith & Wesson revolvers dragging at their hips, the students tugged at their guns, adjusting their weight.

One man stopped them. “You look like nice fellers,” he told the group. “Take some friendly advice. In Cheyenne, don’t touch your guns ’less you mean to use ’em. Round here, people don’t look at your face, they look at your hands, and a great deal of drinking is done in these precincts at night.”

There were not only gunfighters on the boardwalk. They passed several nymphs du pave, heavily painted, calling out teasingly to them from dark doorways. Altogether they found it exotic and thrilling, their first experience of the real West, the dangerous West they had been waiting for. They entered several saloons, sampled the harsh liquor, played hands of keno and 21. One student pulled out a pocket watch. “Nearly ten, and we haven’t seen a shooting yet,” he said, with a tinge of disappointment.

Within minutes, they saw a shooting.

“It happened astonishingly fast,” Johnson noted.

One moment, angry shouts and curses; the next moment, chairs scraped back and men ducking away while the two principals snarled at each other, though they were just a few feet apart. They were both gamblers of the roughest sort. “Make your move, then,” one said, and as the other went for his pistol, the first drew his gun and shot him right in his abdomen. There was a great cloud of black powder and the shot man was thrown back across the room by the impact, his clothes burning from the close shooting. He bled heavily, moaned indecipherably, twitched for a minute, then lay quite dead. Some of the others hustled the shooter out. The town marshal was summoned, but by the time he arrived, most of the gamblers had returned to their tables, to the games that had been so recently interrupted.

It was a cold-blooded display, and the students—no doubt in shock—were relieved when they heard the sound of music from the theater next door. When several gamblers left the tables to see the show, they followed hurriedly along to see this next attraction.

And here, unexpectedly, William Johnson fell in love.

The Pride De Paree Theater was a two-story triangular affair with the stage at the wide end, tables on the floor, and balconies mounted high on the walls at both sides. Balcony seats were the most expensive and desirable, though they were farthest from the stage, and so they bought those.

The show, observed Johnson, consisted of “singing, dancing, and petticoat flouncing, the rudest sort of entertainment, but the assembled patrons greeted it with such enthusiastic cheers that their pleasure infected our more discriminating tastes.”

Soon enough they learned the value of balcony seats, for overhead were trapeze bars, on which swung comely young women in scanty costumes and mesh tights. As they arced back and forth, the men in the balconies reached out to tuck dollar bills into the folds of their costumes. The girls appeared to know many of the customers, and there was a deal of good-natured banter high in the air, the girls crying, “Watch them hands, Fred,” and “Mighty big cigar you got there, Clem,” and other endearments.

One student sniffed, “They are no better than prostitutes,” but the others enjoyed the spectacle, shouting and tucking dollar bills with the rest, and the girls, seeing new faces and distinctive Eastern clothes, maneuvered their swings to come close to their balcony again and again.

It was all good fun, and then the girls overhead changed to a new set, and the swinging began again, and one of them came close to their balcony. Laughing, Johnson reached for another dollar bill, and then his eyes met those of the new girl, and the raucous sound of the theater faded away, and time seemed to stop, and he was aware of nothing but the dark intensity of her gaze and the pounding of his own heart.

Her name was Lucienne—“It’s French,” she explained, wiping the light sheen of perspiration from her shoulders.

They were downstairs, sitting at one of the floor tables, where the girls were allowed to have a drink with customers between shows. The other students had gone back to the hotel, but Johnson stayed, hoping Lucienne would come out, and she had. She had sashayed right to his table. “Buy me a drink?”

“Anything you want,” Johnson said. She ordered whiskey, and he had one, too. And then he asked her name, and she told him.

“Lucienne,” he repeated. “Lucienne. A lovely name.”

“Lots of girls in Paris are named Lucienne,” she announced, still wiping the perspiration. “What’s yours?”

“William,” he said. “William Johnson.” Her skin glowed pink; her hair was jet-black, her eyes dark and dancing. He was entranced.

“You look a gent,” she said, smiling. She had a way of smiling with her mouth closed, not revealing her teeth. It made her seem mysterious and self-contained. “Where’re you from?”

“New Haven,” he said. “Well, I grew up in Philadelphia.”

“Back East? I thought you were different. I could tell from your clothes.”

He worried that this might not find favor with her, and suddenly didn’t know what to say.

“Do you have a sweetheart back East?” she asked innocently, helping the conversation along.

“I—” He stopped, then thought it best to tell her the truth. “I was awfully fond of a girl in Philadelphia a few years ago, but she didn’t feel the same way about me.” He looked into her eyes. “But that was—that was a long time ago.”

She looked down and smiled softly and he told himself that he must think of something to say.

“Where are you from?” he asked. “You don’t have a French accent.” Perhaps she had come from France as a child.

“I’m from St. Louis. Lucienne’s only my name de stage, see,” she said cheerfully. “Mr. Barlow—the manager—Mr. Barlow wants everyone in the show to have a French name, because the theater is the Pride de Paree Theater, see. He’s very nice, Mr. Barlow.”

“Have you been in Cheyenne long?”

“Oh no,” she said. “Before, I was in the theater in Virginia City, where we did proper plays by English writers and such, but that closed with the typhoid last winter. I was going home to see my mother, see, but I only had money to get here.”

She laughed, and he saw one of her front teeth was chipped. This little imperfection only made him love her more. She was obviously an independent young woman, making her own way in life.

“And you?” she asked. “You are going to the Black Hills? Looking for gold?”

He smiled. “No, I am with a group of scientists who are digging for fossils.” Her face clouded. “Fossils. Old bones,” he explained.

“Is there a good livelihood in that?”

“No, no. It’s for science,” he explained.

She placed a warm hand on his arm, and the touch electrified him. “I know you gold diggers have secrets,” she said. “I won’t tell.”

“Really, I am searching for fossils.”

She smiled again, content to drop the matter. “And how long are you in Cheyenne?”

“Alas, I am here for only one night. Tomorrow I leave to go farther west.”

This thought already filled him with a delicious pain, but she did not seem to care one way or another. In her straightforward way, she said, “I must do another show in an hour, and stay with the customers another hour after that, but then I am free.”

“I’ll wait,” he said. “I’ll wait all night if you wish it.”

She leaned over and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Until then.” And she swept away, across the crowded room, where other men awaited her company.

The rest of the evening passed as lightly as a dream. Johnson felt no fatigue, and he was happy to sit until she was finished with her performances. They met outside the theater. She had changed to a demure dress of dark cotton. She took his arm.

A man passed them on the sidewalk. In the darkness: “See you later, Lucy?”

“Not tonight, Ben,” she laughed. Johnson turned to glare at the man, but she explained, “It’s just my uncle. He looks after me. Where are you staying?”

“The Inter-Ocean Hotel.”

“We can’t go there,” she said. “They’re very strict about the rooms.”

“I’ll walk you home,” Johnson said.

She gave him a funny look, and then smiled. “All right. That would be nice.”

As they walked, she rested her head on his shoulder.

“Tired?”

“Some.”

The night was warm, the air pleasant. Johnson felt a wonderful peace descend over him.

“I’m going to miss you,” he said.

“Oh, me, too.”

“I’ll be back, though.”

“When?”

“Late August or so.”

“August,” she repeated softly. “August.”

“I know it’s a long time away—”

“Not so long—”

“But I’ll have more time to spend then. I’ll leave the party and stay with you, how does that sound?”

She relaxed against his shoulder. “That would be nice.” They walked in silence. “You’re nice, William. You’re a nice boy.”

And then she turned, and with complete naturalness kissed him on the mouth, right there in the warm Western darkness of Cheyenne, in a deep way he had never yet experienced. Johnson thought he would die with the pleasure of it all.

“I love you, Lucienne,” he blurted. The words just came out, unbidden, unexpected. But it was the truth; he felt it through his whole body.

She stroked his cheek. “You are a nice boy.”

He did not know how long they stayed like that, facing each other in the dark. They kissed again, and a third time. He was breathless.

“Shall we walk on?” he said finally.

She shook her head. “You go on home now. Back to the hotel.”

“I’d better see you to your door.”

“No,” she said. “You have a train in the morning. You get your sleep.”

He looked around at the street. “Are you sure you’ll be all right?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Promise?”

She smiled. “Promise.”

He walked a few steps toward his hotel, turned, and looked back.

“Don’t worry about me,” she called, and blew him a kiss.

He blew a kiss back to her and walked on. At the end of the block he looked back once again, but she was gone.

At the hotel, the sleepy night clerk gave him his key. “Good evening, sir?” he asked.

“Wonderful,” Johnson said. “Absolutely wonderful.”

Morning in Cheyenne

Johnson awoke at eight, refreshed and excited. He looked out his window at the flat expanse of Cheyenne, boxy buildings stretching across the plains. By all accounts it was a dreary sight, but Johnson found it beautiful. And the day was lovely, clear and warm, with the fluffy high clouds peculiar to the West.

It was true that he would not see the beautiful Lucienne for many weeks until his return trip, but this fact added a delicious poignancy to his mood, and he was in excellent humor when he went downstairs to the dining room, where the Marsh party had been instructed to meet for breakfast, at nine.

No one was there.

A table had been set for a large group, but the dirty plates were being collected by a waiter.

“Where is everybody?” Johnson asked.

“Who do you mean?”

“Professor Marsh and his students.”

“They’re not here,” the waiter said.

“Where are they?”

“Gone an hour or more.”

The words sank in slowly. “The professor and the students are gone?”

“They went to catch the nine o’clock train.”

“What nine o’clock train?”

The waiter looked at Johnson irritably. “I have a lot to do,” he said, turning away, rattling the plates.

Their bags and expedition equipment had been stored in a large room on the ground floor of the hotel, behind the reception desk. The bellboy unlocked the door: the room was empty except for the crates containing Johnson’s photographic equipment.

“They’re gone!”

“Something of yours missing?” the bellboy said.

“No, not mine. But everyone else is gone.”

“I just came on duty,” the bell captain said apologetically. He was a boy of sixteen. “Perhaps you should ask at the desk.”

“Oh yes, Mr. Johnson,” said the man at the front desk. “Professor Marsh said not to wake you when they departed. He said you were leaving the expedition here in Cheyenne.”

“He said what?”

“That you were leaving the expedition.”

Johnson felt panic. “Why would he say that?”

“I really don’t know, sir.”

“What am I going to do now?” Johnson asked aloud.

The distress must have been apparent in his face and voice. The man at the front desk looked at him sympathetically.

“They’re serving breakfast in the dining room for another half hour,” he suggested.

He had no appetite, but he returned to the dining room and took a small table to one side. The waiter was still clearing dishes from the bare table; Johnson watched, imagining the group of Marsh and the students, imagining their excited voices, talking at once, ready to leave . . . Why had they left him behind? What possible reason could there be?

The bellboy approached him. “Are you with the Marsh expedition?”

“I am.”

“The professor asked if he might join you for breakfast.”

In an instant, Johnson realized that it was all a mistake after all, that the professor had not gone, the hotel staff had merely misunderstood, everything was going to be all right.

With immense relief he said, “Of course he may join me.”

A moment later, a clear, rather high voice said, “Mr. Johnson?”

Johnson faced a man he had never seen before—a wiry, fair-haired man with a mustache and goatee stood next to his table. He was tall, in his middle thirties, and rather formally dressed in stiff collar and frock coat. Although his clothes were expensive and well cut, he nevertheless gave the impression of an energetic indifference, even sloppiness. His eyes were bright and lively. He appeared amused. “May I join you?”

“Who are you?”

“Don’t you know?” the man said, more amused than ever. He extended his hand. “I’m Professor Cope.” Johnson noticed that his grip was firm and confident, and his fingers stained with ink.

Johnson stared, and leapt to his feet. Cope! Cope himself! Right here, in Cheyenne! Cope eased him back into his seat and beckoned to the waiter for coffee. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “I’m not the monster you have heard described. That particular monster exists only in the diseased imagination of Mr. Marsh. Yet another of his descriptions of nature is in error. You must have observed that the man is as paranoid and secretive as he is fat, and always imagines the worst in everybody. More coffee?”

Numbly, Johnson nodded; Cope poured more coffee.

“If you haven’t ordered, I recommend the pork hash. I myself eat it daily. It is simple fare, but the cook has a feel for it.”

Johnson mumbled he would have the hash. The waiter departed. Cope smiled at him.

He certainly didn’t look like a monster, Johnson thought. Quick, energetic, even nervous—but no monster. On the contrary, there was a youthful, almost childish enthusiasm about him, yet also an air of determination and competence. He seemed like a man who got things done.

“What are your plans now?” Cope asked cheerfully, stirring a dollop of black molasses in his coffee.

“I’m not supposed to talk to you.”

“That hardly seems necessary now that the old schemer has left you behind. What are your plans now?”

“I don’t know. I have no plans.” Johnson looked around the nearly empty dining room. “I seem to have been separated from my party.”

“Separated? He abandoned you.”

“Why would he do that?” Johnson asked.

“He thought you were a spy, of course.”

“But I’m not a spy.”

Cope smiled. “I know that, Mr. Johnson, and you know that. Everyone knows that except Mr. Marsh. It is just one of the many thousands of things he does not know, yet assumes he does.”

Johnson was confused, and it must have shown on his face.

“Which fantasy did he tell you about me?” Cope asked, still cheerful. “Wife beater? Thief? Philanderer? Ax murderer?” The whole business seemed to amuse him.

“He doesn’t have a high opinion of you.”

Cope’s inky fingers fluttered in the air, a dismissing gesture. “Marsh is a godless man, cut loose from all moorings. His mind is active and sick. I have known him for some time. In fact, we were friends once. We both studied in Germany during the Civil War. And later we dug fossils together in New Jersey, in fact. But that was a long time ago.”

The food came. Johnson realized that he was hungry.

“That’s better,” Cope said, watching him eat. “Now, I understand that you are a photographer. I can use a photographer. I am on my way to the far West, to dig for dinosaur bones with a party of students from the University of Pennsylvania.”

“Just like Professor Marsh,” Johnson said.

“Not quite like Professor Marsh. We do not travel everywhere with special rates and government favors. And my students are not chosen for wealth and connection, but rather for their interest in science. Ours is not a self-aggrandizing publicity junket, but a serious expedition.” Cope paused, studying Johnson’s earnest attention. “We’re a small party and it will be rough going, but you are welcome to come, if you care to.”

And that was how William Johnson found himself, at noon, standing on the platform of the Cheyenne railroad station with his equipment stacked at his side, waiting for the train to carry him west, in the party of Edward Drinker Cope.

Cope’s Expedition

It was immediately clear that Cope’s party lacked the military precision that characterized Marsh’s every undertaking. His group straggled into the station singly and in pairs: first Cope and his charming wife, Annie, who greeted Johnson warmly and would not be drawn to say anything against Marsh, despite the prompting of her husband.

Then a barrel-chested man of twenty-six named Charles H. Sternberg, a fossil hunter from Kansas who had worked for Cope the previous year. Charlie Sternberg walked with a limp, the result of a childhood accident; he could not shake hands because of a “felon,” a fistula in his palm; and he was subject to occasional bouts of malaria, but he exuded an air of practical competence and wry humor.

Next, another young man, J.C. Isaac (“it just stands for J.C.”), who was Indian shy; six weeks earlier, he had been among a party of friends attacked by Indians. The others had been shot down and scalped, and only Isaac escaped, leaving him with a deep fear, and a facial tic around the eyes.

There were three students: Leander “Toad” Davis, a puffy, asthmatic, bespectacled boy with protuberant eyes. Toad was particularly interested in Indian society, and seemed to know a lot about it. And George Morton, a sallow, silent young man from Yale who sketched constantly and announced that he intended to be an artist or a minister like his father; he wasn’t sure yet. Morton was withdrawn, rather sullen, and Johnson did not care for him. And finally Harold Chapman from Pennsylvania, a brightly talkative young man with an interest in bones. After being introduced to Johnson he almost immediately wandered off to poke through some bleached buffalo bones stacked near the station platform.

Johnson’s favorite of the group was the lovely Mrs. Cope, who was anything but the deluded invalid Marsh had claimed. She would accompany them only as far as Utah. Then the six men—with Johnson making seven—would set out for the Judith River basin of northern Montana Territory, to hunt for Cretaceous fossils.

“Montana!” Johnson said, remembering what Sheridan had said about staying away from Montana and Wyoming. “Do you really mean to go to Montana?”

“Yes, of course, it’s tremendously exciting,” Cope said, his face and manner radiating his enthusiasm. “No one has been there since Ferdinand Hayden discovered the area back in ’55 and noted great quantities of fossils.”

“What happened to Hayden?” Johnson asked.

“Oh, he was driven off by the Blackfeet,” Cope said. “They made him run for his life.”

And Cope laughed.

West with Cope

Johnson awoke in inky blackness, hearing the roar of the train. He fumbled for his pocket watch; it said ten o’clock. For a confused moment, he thought it was ten at night. Then the darkness broke with a shaft of brilliant light, and another, and flickering shafts illuminated his sleeping compartment: the train was thundering through long snow sheds as it crossed the Rocky Mountains. He saw fields of snow in late June, the brilliance so dazzling it hurt his eyes.

Ten o’clock! He threw on his clothes, hurried out of the compartment, and found Cope staring out the window, drumming his stained fingers impatiently on the sill. “I’m sorry I overslept, Professor, if only someone had awakened me, I—”

“Why?” Cope asked. “What difference does it make that you slept?”

“Well, I mean, I—it’s so late—”

“We are still two hours from Salt Lake,” Cope said. “And you slept because you were tired, an excellent reason for sleeping.” Cope smiled. “Or did you think I would leave you, too?”

Confused, Johnson said nothing. Cope continued to smile. And then, after a moment, he bent over the sketch pad in his lap, took up his pen, and drew with his ink-stained fingers. Without looking up, he said, “I believe Mrs. Cope has arranged for a pot of coffee.”

That night, Johnson recorded in his journal:

Cope spent the morning sketching, which he does with great rapidity and talent. I have learned a lot about him from the others. He was a child prodigy, who wrote his first scientific paper at the age of six, and he has now (I believe him to be 36) published some 1,000 papers. He is rumored to have had a love affair before his marriage that was broken off, and then, perhaps in despair, he traveled to Europe, where he met many of the great natural scientists of the day. He met Marsh in Berlin for the first time and shared correspondence, manuscripts, and photographs. He is also considered to be an expert on snakes, reptiles and amphibians in general, and fish. Sternberg and the students (except Morton) are devoted to him. He is a Quaker, and peace-loving to the core. He wears wooden false teeth, which are remarkably life-like; I wouldn’t have known. In this way and nearly every other, he is utterly different from Marsh. Where Marsh is plodding, Cope is brilliant; where Marsh is scheming, Cope is honest; where Marsh is secretive, Cope is free. In all ways, Professor Cope shows greater humanity than his counterpart. Professor Marsh is a desperate, driven fanatic who makes his own life as miserable as the lives of those he commands. While Cope shows balance and restraint, and is altogether agreeable.

It would not be long before Johnson took a different view of Cope.

The train descended out of the Rocky Mountains to Great Salt Lake City, in the Territory of Utah.

Established thirty years before, Salt Lake City was a village of wood and brick houses, carefully laid out in a regular grid pattern, and dominated by the white facade of the Mormon Tabernacle, a building, Johnson wrote, “of such breathtaking ugliness that few edifices anywhere in America can hope to surpass it.” This was a common view. Around the same time the journalist Charles Nordhoff called it “an admirably-arranged and very ugly building,” and concluded that “Salt Lake need not hold any mere pleasure traveler more than a day.”

Although Washington claimed this as the Territory of Utah, and therefore a part of the United States, it had been established as a Mormon theocracy, as the scale and importance of the religious buildings made clear. Cope’s group visited the temple, the Tithing House, and the Lion House, where Brigham Young kept his multitudinous wives.

Cope then had an audience with President Young, and he took his own wife with him to meet the elderly patriarch. Johnson asked what he was like. “Gracious man, gentle and calculating. For forty years, the Mormons were hounded and persecuted in every state of the Union; now they make their own state, and persecute the Gentiles in turn.” Cope shook his head. “You would think that people who had experienced injustice would be loath to inflict it on others, and yet they do so with alacrity. The victims become the victimizers with a chilling righteousness. This is the nature of fanaticism, to attract and provoke extremes of behavior. And this is why fanatics are all the same, whatever specific form their fanaticism takes.”

“Are you saying Mormons are fanatics?” asked Morton, the minister’s son.

“I am saying their religion has made a state that does not halt injustice, but rather institutionalizes it. They feel superior to others who have different beliefs. They feel only they possess the right way.”

“I don’t see how you can say—” began Morton, but the others jumped in. Morton and Cope were always at loggerheads on religious subjects, and the arguments became tedious after a while.

“Why did you see Brigham Young?” Sternberg asked.

Cope shrugged. “There are no known fossil deposits in Utah now, but there are rumors of bones in the eastern regions near the Colorado border. I see no harm in making friendships for the future.” And he added, “Marsh met him, last year.”

The following day Mrs. Cope took the Union Pacific train back east, while the men traveled north by narrow gauge railway to Franklin, Idaho, “an alkali flats town,” Johnson noted, “with nothing to recommend it save that rail and stage lines enable one to leave it as soon as possible.”

But in Franklin, while buying stagecoach tickets, Cope was suddenly accosted by the sheriff, a large man with small eyes. “You are under arrest,” he told Cope, taking him by the arm, “and charged with murder.”

“Whom am I supposed to have murdered?” Cope asked, astonished.

“Your father,” the sheriff said. “Back East.”

“That’s ridiculous—my father died last year of a heart attack.” Despite being a Quaker, Cope was known for his flashing temper, and Johnson could see that he was doing his utmost to remain civil. “I loved my father with all my heart—he was kind and wise and supportive of my irregular scholarly wanderings,” he said with deep fury.

The sudden display of eloquence took everyone aback. The men all followed Cope and the sheriff to the jail, from a polite distance. It turned out a federal warrant for his arrest had been filed in the Idaho Territory. It also turned out that the federal marshal was in another district and would not return to Franklin until September. Cope, said the sheriff, would have to “cool his heels” in jail until then.

Cope protested that he was Professor Edward Drinker Cope, a United States paleontologist. The sheriff showed him the telegram stating that “Prof. E. D. Cope, paleontologist” was the man wanted for murder.

“I know who is behind this,” Cope said angrily. He was turning purple in the face.

“Now, Professor . . .” Sternberg said.

“I’m fine,” Cope said stiffly. He turned to the sheriff. “I propose to pay the telegraph costs to verify that the charges against me are untrue.”

The sheriff spat tobacco. “That’s fair enough. You get your father to cable me back, and I’ll apologize.”

“I can’t do that,” Cope said.

“Why not?”

“I already told you, my father’s dead.”

“You think I’m a fool,” the sheriff said, and grabbed Cope by the collar, to drag him into the jail cell. He was rewarded by a series of lightning-swift punches from Cope that knocked him to the ground; Cope proceeded to kick the sheriff repeatedly while the unfortunate man rolled in the dust and while Sternberg and Isaac cried, “Now, Professor!” and “That’s enough, Professor!” and “Remember yourself, Professor!”

At length, Isaac managed to drag Cope away; Sternberg helped the sheriff to his feet and dusted him off. “I’m sorry, but the professor has a terrible temper.”

“Temper? The man is a menace.”

“Well, you see he knows that Professor Marsh sent you that telegram, along with a bribe to arrest him, and the injustice of your behavior makes him angry.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the sheriff sputtered, without conviction.

“You see,” Sternberg said, “most places the professor goes, he encounters trouble from Marsh. Their rivalry has been going on for years now, and they are both able to spot it readily.”

“I want all of you out of town,” the sheriff shouted. “Do you hear me, out of town!”

“With pleasure,” Sternberg said.

They left on the next stage.

From Franklin, they faced a six-hundred-mile journey on Concord stagecoach to Fort Benton, Montana Territory. Johnson, who had thus far experienced nothing more arduous than a railway carriage, was looking forward to the romance of a coach ride. Sternberg and the others knew better.

It was a horrible journey: ten miles an hour, day and night, with no stops except for meals, outrageously expensive at one dollar each, and awful. And at every coach stop, everyone would talk of the Indian troubles, and the prospect of scalping, so that if Johnson had had any desire for the coach stops’ moldy army-surplus bacon, the rancid butter, and the week-old bread, he lost his appetite.

The landscape was uniformly dreary, the dust harshly alkaline; they had to walk up all the steep ascents, day or night; in the rattling, bouncing coach, sleep was impossible; and their chemical supplies leaked, so that at one point, “we were subjected to a gentle rain of hydrochloric acid, which drops etched a smoking pattern on the hats of the gentlemen, and elicited elaborate curses from all involved. The coach was stopped, and the driver accorded our left-over curses; the offending bottle stopped, and we were on our way once more.”

Besides their group, the only other passenger was a Mrs. Peterson, a young woman married to an army captain stationed in Helena, Montana Territory. Mrs. Peterson seemed none too enthusiastic to be rejoining her husband; indeed, she cried frequently. Often she opened a letter, read it, wiped tears from her eyes, and tucked it away again. At the last coach stop before Helena, she burned the letter, dropping it to the ground to dissolve into ash. When the stage reached Helena, she was formally met by four army captains, their demeanor grave. They escorted her away; she walked erectly in their midst.

The others stared after her.

“He must be dead,” Toad said. “That’s what it’s about. He’s dead.”

At the coach station, they were told that Captain Peterson had been killed by Indians. And there were rumors of a recent major cavalry defeat at Indian hands. Some said General Terry had been killed along the Powder River; others that General Crook had narrowly escaped death on the banks of the Yellowstone, and that he had suffered blood poisoning from the arrows removed from his side.

In Helena they were urged to turn back, but Cope never considered it. “Idle talk,” he said, “foolish talk. We will go on.” And they climbed back aboard the coach for the long trip to Fort Benton.

Located on the banks of the Missouri River, Fort Benton had been a trappers’ refuge in the early days of the Montana Territory, back when John Jacob Astor was lobbying in Congress to prevent any legislation to protect the buffalo, and thus interfere with his lucrative trade in hides. Northern Montana was the source of other hides as well, including beaver and wolf. But now the fur trade was declining in importance, and the fastest-growing towns were located farther south, in the mining regions of Butte and Helena, where there was gold and copper. Fort Benton had seen better days, and looked it.

As their stagecoach arrived on July 4, 1876, they saw that the army stockade gates were closed, and there was a general air of tension. The soldiers were gloomy and distressed. The American flag flapped at half-mast. Cope went to see the commanding officer, Captain Charles Ransom.

“What’s the trouble?” Cope asked. “Why is your flag lowered?”

“Seventh Cavalry, sir.”

“What about it?” Cope asked.

“The whole of the Seventh Cavalry under General Custer was massacred at the Little Bighorn last week. More than three hundred army dead. And no survivors.”

Fort Benton

George Armstrong Custer remained as controversial in death as he had been in life. Ol’ Curly had always been the focus of strong feelings. He had graduated last in his class at West Point, accumulating ninety-seven demerits in his last half year, just three short of dismissal. Even as a cadet, he was making enemies who would dog him all his life.

But the insubordinate cadet proved a brilliant military leader, the Boy Wonder of Appomattox. Handsome, dashing, and reckless, he went on to earn a reputation as a great Indian fighter in the West, but his reputation was debated widely. A dedicated hunter, he traveled with greyhounds wherever he went, and it was said that he took better care of his dogs than he did his men. In 1867, he ordered his troops to shoot deserters from his company. Five men were wounded, and Custer refused them medical aid. One subsequently died.

Even for the army, this was too much. In July 1867, he was arrested, court-martialed, and suspended for a year. But he was a favorite of the generals, and he was back ten months later at Phil Sheridan’s insistence, this time fighting the Indians along the Washita, in the Oklahoma Territory.

Custer led the 7th Cavalry against Black Kettle. His instructions were clear: to kill as many Indians as possible. General Sherman himself had said: “The more we can kill this year, the less will have to be killed the next year for the more I see of these Indians the more I am convinced they will all have to be killed or be maintained as a species of paupers.”

It was a particularly vicious war. The Indians had been taking white women and children as hostages, whom they ransomed back to the settlers; whenever soldiers attacked an Indian village, the white hostages were summarily executed. This circumstance excused the kind of dashing bravado that was, in any case, Custer’s trademark.

Forcing his troops on extended marches, forgoing food and rest, he ran down Black Kettle, killed the chief, and destroyed his village. Only then did he realize that Indians from surrounding villages were gathering for a massive counterattack, and that he had overextended himself and endangered all his troops. He managed to pull out, but left behind a company of fifteen men, presuming them to be already dead.

Later, the entire battle became embroiled in scandal. The Eastern press criticized Custer for his harsh treatment of Black Kettle’s tribe, saying that Black Kettle was not a bad Indian but a scapegoat for military frustrations; this was almost certainly untrue. The army criticized Custer for his hasty attack and his equally hasty abandonment of the cut-off company; Custer was unable to provide a satisfactory explanation for his behavior in the crisis, but he felt, with justification, that he had only done what the army had expected him to do, to run down the Indians with his usual dash and bravado.

His personal style—his long curly hair, his greyhounds, his buckskin clothes, and his arrogant manner—remained notorious, as did the articles he wrote for the Eastern press. Custer had a peculiar affinity for his enemy, and often wrote admiringly of the Indians; this was no doubt the source of the persistent rumor he had fathered a child by a beautiful Indian girl after the Battle of the Washita.

And still the controversy continued. In 1874, it was Custer who led a party into the sacred Black Hills, discovered gold, and thus precipitated the Sioux War; in the spring of 1876, he had gone to Washington to testify against the corruption of Secretary of War Belknap, who received kickbacks for supplies from every army post in the country. His testimony had helped start impeachment proceedings against Belknap, but had not endeared him to the Grant administration, which ordered him to remain in Washington and, when he left without permission in March, demanded his arrest.

Now he was dead, in what was already being called the most shocking and humiliating military defeat in American history.

“Who did it?” Cope asked.

“Sitting Bull,” Ransom said. “Custer charged Sitting Bull’s camp without scouting it first. Sitting Bull had three thousand warriors. Custer had three hundred.” Captain Ransom shook his head. “Mind you, Custer would have been killed sooner or later; he was vain and hard on his men; I’m surprised he wasn’t ‘accidentally’ shot in the back on the way into battle, as often happens with his type. I was with him in the Washita, when he charged a village and then couldn’t get himself out; luck and bluff saved the day, but luck runs out eventually. He almost certainly brought this one on himself. And the Sioux hated him, wanted to kill him. But it’s going to be a bloody war now. This whole country’s red-hot now.”

“Well,” Cope said, “we’re going to search for fossil bones in the Judith badlands.”

Ransom stared at him in astonishment. “I wouldn’t,” he said.

“There’s trouble in the Judith River basin?”

“Not specifically, no, sir. Not that we know of.”

“Well then?”

“Sir, most all the Indian tribes are on the warpath. Sitting Bull has three thousand warriors somewhere in the south—nobody knows where for sure—but we figure they’ll head for asylum in Canada before winter, and that means they’ll pass through the Judith basin.”

“That’s fine,” Cope said. “We’ll be safe for a few weeks during summer, for the reasons you just said. Sitting Bull isn’t there.”

“Sir,” Ransom said, “the Judith River is the shared hunting grounds of the Sioux and the Crow. Now, the Crow are usually peaceable, but these days they’ll kill you as soon as look at you, because they can blame your deaths on the Sioux.”

“That’s not likely,” Cope said. “We’re going.”

“I have no orders to prevent you from going,” Ransom said. “I’m sure nobody in Washington ever imagined that anyone would go. To go out there is suicide, sir. For myself, I wouldn’t go out with less than five hundred trained cavalry at my side.”

“I appreciate your concern,” Cope said. “You have done your duty in informing me. But I left Philadelphia with the intention of going to the Judith, and I will not turn back within a hundred miles of my destination. Now, can you recommend a guide?”

“Certainly, sir,” Ransom said.

But over the next twenty-four hours, the guides mysteriously became unavailable, as did horses, the provisions, and everything else that Cope had expected to obtain at Fort Benton. Yet he was undaunted. He simply offered more money, and more on top of that, until supplies began to become available after all.

It was here they had their first glimpse of the famous iron will of Professor Cope. Nothing stopped him. They demanded $180, an outrageous sum, for a broken-down wagon; he paid it. They wanted even more for his four “wheelers” and his four saddle ponies, “the meanest ponies that ever picketed together,” in Sternberg’s estimation. They would sell him no food except beans and rice and cheap Red Dog whiskey; he bought what he could. All together, Cope spent $900 for his motley outfit, but he never complained. He kept his gaze fixed on his destination—the fossils of the Judith basin.

Finally, on July 6, Ransom called him into the army stockade. It was the scene of bustling activity and preparation. Ransom told Cope that he had just received orders from the Department of War in Washington that “no civilians were permitted to enter the disputed Indian lands in the Montana, Wyoming, or Dakota Territories.”

“I’m sorry to put a stop to your plans, sir,” Ransom said politely, setting the telegram aside.

“You must do your duty, of course,” Cope said, equally politely.

Cope rejoined his group. They had already heard the news.

“I guess we have to go back,” Sternberg said.

“Not yet,” Cope said cheerfully. “You know, I like Fort Benton. I think we should stay here a few days more.”

“You like Fort Benton?”

“Yes. It’s pleasant and agreeable. And full of preparations.” And Cope smiled.

On July 8, the Fort Benton cavalry set off to fight the Sioux, the column riding out while the band played “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” Later that day, a quite different group quietly slipped out. They were, wrote Johnson, a “particularly motley crew.”

At the head of the column rode Edward Drinker Cope, United States paleontologist and millionaire. On his left rode Charlie Sternberg, occasionally bending to massage his stiff leg.

On Cope’s right rode Little Wind, their Shoshoni scout and guide. Little Wind was proud in his bearing, and he had assured Cope that he knew the Judith River area like the face of his own father.

Behind these three came J.C. Isaac, who kept a sharp eye on Little Wind; with him were the students, Leander Davis, Harold Chapman, George Morton, and Johnson.

Bringing up the rear was the wagon pulled by its four stubborn horses, and driven by the teamster and cook “Sergeant” Russell T. Hill. He was a fat, weathered man whose girth had persuaded Cope that he could cook. Teamster Hill was distinguished not only by his size and proficiency at swearing so common among his trade, but also by his nicknames, which seemed to be endless. He was called “Cookie,” “Chippie,” “Squinty,” and “Stinky.” Hill was a man of few words, and those were most often repeated again and again.

So, for example, when the students would ask him why he was called Cookie or Stinky or another of his names, he would invariably reply, “I reckon you’ll see soon enough.”

And when confronted with an obstacle, however minor, Hill would always say, “Can’t be done, can’t be done.”

Finally, tethered to the wagon was Bessie, the mule that carried all Johnson’s photographic supplies. Bessie was Johnson’s responsibility, and he grew to hate her as the expedition went on.

An hour after they started, they had left Fort Benton behind, and they were alone on the empty vastness of the Great Plains.

Part II

Night on the Plains

The first night they camped in a place called Clagett, on the banks of the Judith River. There was a trading post here, surrounded by a stockade, but it had been recently abandoned.

Hill cooked his first dinner, which they found heavy but otherwise acceptable. Hill used buffalo chips for fuel, thus explaining two of his nicknames: Chippie and Stinky. After dinner, Hill hung their food in a tree.

“What’re you doing that for?” Johnson asked.

“That’s to keep the food away from marauding grizzlies,” Hill said. “Now go get ready to sleep.”

Hill himself stamped the ground with his boots before laying out his bedding.

“What’re you doing that for?” Johnson asked.

“That’s to stop up the snake holes,” Hill said, “so the rattlers don’t climb under the blankets with you at night.”

“You’re jobbing me,” Johnson said.

“I ain’t,” Hill warned. “You ask anyone. Gets cold at night and they like the warm, so they crawl right in with you, coil up against your groin.”

Johnson went to Sternberg, who was also laying out his bedding. “Aren’t you going to stamp the ground?”

“No,” Sternberg said. “This spot isn’t lumpy, looks real comfortable.”

“What about rattlesnakes crawling into the blankets?”

“That hardly ever happens,” Sternberg said.

“It hardly ever happens?” Johnson’s voice rose in alarm.

“I wouldn’t worry over it,” Sternberg said. “In the morning, just wake up slow, and see if you got any visitors. Snakes just run away, come morning.”

Johnson shuddered.

They had seen no sign of human life all day long, but Isaac was convinced they were at risk from Indians. “With Mr. Indian,” he grumbled, “the time you feel safest is the time you aren’t.” Isaac insisted they post guards throughout the night; the others grudgingly went along. Isaac himself would take the last watch, before dawn.

This was Johnson’s first night out under the great domed sky of the prairie, and sleep was impossible. The very thought of a rattlesnake or a grizzly bear would have prevented any sleep, but there were too many other sounds besides—the whisper of the wind in the grass, the hooting of owls in the darkness, the distant howls of coyotes. He stared up at the thousands of stars in the cloudless sky, and listened.

He was awake for each changing of the guard, and saw Isaac take over from Sternberg at four o’clock in the morning. But eventually fatigue overcame him, and he was soundly asleep when a series of explosions jolted him awake. Isaac was shouting, “Halt! Halt, I say, halt!” as he fired his revolver.

They all jumped up. Isaac pointed east across the prairie. “There’s something out there! Can you see it, there’s something out there!”

They looked and saw nothing.

“I tell you, there’s a man, a lone man!”

“Where?”

“There! Out there!”

They stared at the distant horizon of the plains, and saw nothing at all.

Cookie unleashed a stream of epithets. “He’s Injun shy and he’s crazy, too—he’s going to see a red man behind every bush long as we’re out here. We won’t get a lick of sleep.”

Cope quietly said that he would take over the watch, and sent the others back to bed.

It would be many weeks before they realized that Isaac had been right.

If Stinky’s food and Isaac’s guarding left something to be desired, so did Little Wind’s scouting. The Shoshoni brave got them lost for much of the following day.

Two hours after they set out, they came across fresh horse manure on the plains.

“Indians,” Isaac gasped.

Hill snorted in disgust. “Know what that is?” he said. “That’s manure from our horses, that’s what it is.”

“That’s impossible.”

“You think so? See the wagon tracks over there?” He pointed to faint tracks, where the prairie grass had been pressed down. “You want to bet I put the wheels of this wagon in those tracks and they line up exactly? We’re lost, I tell you.”

Cope rode alongside Little Wind. “Are we lost?”

“No,” Little Wind said.

“Well, what do you expect him to say?” Hill grumbled. “You ever heard an Indian admit he was lost?”

“I’ve never heard of an Indian being lost,” Sternberg said.

“Well, we got one here, purchased at great expense,” Hill said. “You mark my words, he’s never been in this part of the country before, no matter what he says. And he’s lost, no matter what he says.”

For Johnson, the conversation filled him with strange dread. All day they had been riding under the great bowl of the sky, across uniformly flat country, a great vista without landmarks except for the occasional isolated tree or line of cottonwoods that marked a creek. It was truly a “sea of grass,” and like the sea it was trackless and vast. He began to understand why everyone in the West talked so familiarly of certain landmarks—Pompey’s Pillar, Twin Peaks, Yellow Cliffs. These few recognizable features were islands in the wide ocean of the prairie, and knowledge of their locations was essential for survival.

Johnson rode alongside Toad. “Can we really be lost?”

Toad shook his head. “Indians are born here. They can read the land in ways we can’t begin to imagine. We’re not lost.”

“Well, we’re going south,” Hill grumbled, staring at the sun. “Why’re we going south, when every man here knows that the Judith lands are east? Can someone tell me that?”

The next two hours were tense, until finally they came upon an old wagon track running east. Little Wind pointed. “This road for wagons to Judith lands.”

“That’s what the problem was,” Toad said. “He’s not used to traveling with a wagon, and he had to find the track for our wagon to use.”

“The problem,” Hill said, “is that he doesn’t know the country.”

“He knows this country,” Sternberg said. “This is the Indian hunting lands we’re in now.”

They rode on in sober silence.

Incidents on the Plains

In the middle of the still hot afternoon, Johnson was riding alongside Cope, talking quite peaceably to him, when his hat suddenly flew away in the air, although there was no wind.

A moment later they heard the snapping report of a long rifle. Then another, and another.

Someone was shooting at them.

“Down!” Cope shouted. “Down!”

They dismounted and ducked for cover, crawling beneath the wagon. In the distance they could see a brown swirling dust cloud.

“Oh God,” Isaac whispered. “Indians.”

The distant cloud grew in size, resolving into many silhouetted horsemen. More bullets whizzed through the air; the fabric of the wagon ripped; bullets spanged off pots and pans. Bessie brayed in alarm.

“We’re done for,” Morton moaned.

“Any minute now we’ll hear those arrows whistling,” Isaac said, “and then, when they get closer, out come the tomahawks—”

“Shut up!” Cope said. He had never taken his eyes off the cloud. “They’re not Indians.”

“Damn if you’re not a bigger fool than I thought you were! Who else’d be—”

Isaac fell silent. The cloud was now close enough that they could resolve the riders into individual figures. Blue-coated figures.

“Might still be red men,” Isaac said. “Wearing Custer’s jackets. For a surprise attack.”

“Not much surprise if they are.”

Little Wind squinted at the horizon. “Not Indians,” he pronounced finally. “Saddle ponies.”

“Damn!” Cookie shouted. “The army! My boys in blue!” He leapt up shouting, waving his hands. A fusillade of lead sent him diving back beneath the wagon.

The army horsemen rode around the wagon, whooping Indian-style, firing their pistols into the air. Finally, they stopped, and a young captain pulled up, his horse snorting. He aimed his revolver at the figures huddled beneath the wagon.

“Out, you slime. Out! By God, I’ve a mind to finish you right here, every last man of you.”

Cope emerged, purple with fury. His fists were clenched at his sides. “I demand to know the meaning of this outrage.”

“You’ll know it in hell, you blackguard,” the army captain said, and he shot twice at Cope, but his rearing horse threw off his aim.

“Wait, Cap’n,” one of the soldiers said. By now Cope’s party had all crawled from beneath the wagon and stood lined up along the wheels. “They don’t look like gunrunners.”

“Damn me if they’re not,” the captain said. They could see now that he was drunk; his words were slurred; his body rocked precariously in the saddle. “Nobody but gunrunners’d be out in this territory now. Supplying Mr. Indian with arms, when just last week six hundred of our own dear lads have fallen to the savages. It’s slime like you make it—”

Cope drew himself up. “This is a scientific expedition,” he said, “undertaken with the full knowledge and authorization of Captain Ransom at Fort Benton.”

“Balls,” said the captain, and discharged his gun into the air for punctuation.

“I am Professor Cope of Philadelphia, and I am a United States paleontologist and—”

“Kiss my calico-covered arse,” the captain said.

Cope lost his temper and leapt forward, and Sternberg and Isaac hurried to intervene. “Now, Professor, control yourself, Professor!” Sternberg yelled as Cope struggled, shouting, “I want him, I want him!”

In the ensuing confusion, the army captain fired three more times, and wheeled on his horse. “Light ’em up, boys! Light ’em up!”

“But Captain—”

“I said light ’em up”—more gunshots—“and I mean light ’em up!”

There were still more gunshots, and Toad fell, shrieking, “I am hit, I am hit!” They rushed to help him; blood poured freely from his hand. One of the soldiers rode up with a torch. The dry canvas of the wagon burst into flames.

They turned to put out the fire, which roared fiercely. The cavalry wheeled around them, the captain shouting, “Teach ’em a lesson, boys! Teach ’em in hell!”

And then, still firing, they turned and rode off.

Cope’s journal laconically notes:

Have experienced first open hostilities today at the hands of U.S. Cavalry. Fire put out with minimal damage although we are without protective covering for wagon and two of our tents are burned. One horse shot dead. One student received flesh wound in hand. No serious injuries, thank God.

That night it rained. Torrential cracking thunderstorms continued all the next day and all that night. Cold and shivering, they huddled beneath the wagon, trying to sleep with the intermittent glaring flash of lightning showing them each other’s haggard faces.

The next day it rained again, and the trail was turned to mud, bogging down the wagons. They made only two miles of painful, soggy progress. But in the late afternoon, the sun burst through the clouds and the air became warmer. They felt better, especially when, climbing to the top of a gentle rise, they saw one of the great sights of the West.

A herd of buffalo, stretching as far as the eye could see, dark shaggy shapes clumping on the yellow-green grass of the plains. The animals seemed peaceful, except for occasional snorting and bellowing.

Cope estimated there were two million buffalo in the herd, perhaps more. “You are lucky to see it,” he said. “In another year or two, herds like these will be only a memory.”

Isaac was nervous. “Where there are buffalo, there are Indians,” he said, and he insisted they camp that night on high ground.

Johnson was fascinated by the indifference of the animals to the arrival of men. Even when Sternberg went out and shot an antelope for dinner, the herd hardly responded. But Johnson later remembered that Cookie had said to Cope, “Shall I unhitch the wagon tonight?” and Cope looked at the sky and said thoughtfully, “Better not tonight.”

Meanwhile the antelope was butchered, and the flesh was found to be crawling with maggoty parasites. Cookie announced he had eaten worse, but they decided on a meal of biscuits and beans instead. Johnson recorded that “I am already thoroughly sick of beans, with six more weeks of them still before me.”

But it was not all bad. They ate, sitting on a rocky outcrop beside the camp and watched the buffalo tinge with red as the sun set behind them. And then, in the light of the moon, the shaggy shapes, and the occasional distant snorting of the creatures, made “a vision of great majesty stretching away peacefully before us. Such were my thoughts as I turned in for a much-needed sleep.”

Lightning cracked the sky at midnight, and the rain began again.

Grumbling and swearing, the students dragged their sleeping outfits under the wagon. Almost immediately, the rain stopped.

They rolled on the hard ground, trying to get back to sleep. “Hell,” Morton said, sniffing. “What is that smell?”

“You’re lyin’ in horseshit,” Toad said.

“Oh God, it’s true.”

They were laughing at Morton’s predicament, with the steady rumble of thunder still in their ears. Then suddenly Cope ran around the wagon, rudely kicking them. “Up! Up! Are you mad? Get up!”

Johnson glanced up, and saw Sternberg and Isaac hastily loading the camp equipment, flinging it into the wagon; the wagon began to move over their heads as they scrambled out beneath. Cookie and Little Wind were shouting to each other.

Johnson ran to Cope. His hair was matted down by the rain; his eyes were wild. Overhead the moon raced among storm clouds.

“What is it?” Johnson shouted over the rumbling thunder. “Why are we moving?”

Cope shoved him roughly away. “The lee of the rocks! Get in the lee of the rocks!” Isaac had already gotten the wagon near the rocky outcrop, and Cookie was struggling with the horses, which snorted and reared, agitated. The students stared at each other, not understanding.

And then Johnson realized the rumble they were hearing was not thunder. It was the buffalo.

Terrorized by the lightning, the buffalo stampeded past the men in a wet, dense river of flesh that flowed around the rocks on both sides. They were all spattered by copious quantities of mud; for Johnson, it was a peculiar sensation, in that “the mud covered our clothing, our hair, our faces, and we grew heavier as we became transformed into mud-men, until finally we were all bowed over by the immense weight of it.”

They eventually could see nothing, and could only listen to the thundering hooves, the snorting and grunting, as the dark shapes hurtled past them, ceaselessly. It seemed as if it went on forever.

In fact, the herd had stampeded past them, without interruption, for two hours.

Johnson awoke, his body stiff and aching. He was unable to open his eyes. He touched his face, felt the hard caked mud, and peeled it away.

“I was greeted by a sight of utter desolation,” he later recalled, “as if a hurricane or a whirlwind had struck us. There was only choppy mud as far as the eye could see, and our pitiful human party picking their way through it. Whatever of our camp outfit had been protected by the rocks was safe; everything else was gone. Two tents trampled into the mud so deeply we could not locate them in the morning; heavy pots and cook pans dented and twisted by the passage of thousands of hooves; tattered fragments of a yellow shirt; a carbine shattered and bent.”

They were greatly discouraged, particularly George Morton, who seemed to be in profound shock. Cookie argued to turn back, but as usual Cope was indomitable. “I am not here to excavate trifling possessions from mud,” he said. “I am here to excavate prehistoric bones.”

“Yes,” Cookie said. “If you ever get there.”

“We will.” He ordered them to break camp and pull out.

Little Wind was particularly grim. He said something to Cope, and then galloped off to the north.

“Where’s he going?” George Morton asked in alarm.

“He doesn’t believe the buffalo stampeded because of lightning,” Cope said. “He says they don’t do that.”

“I’ve known ’em to do it,” Isaac said, “in Wyoming. Stupid and unpredictable, buffalo are.”

“But what else could it be?” Morton said, still alarmed. “What does he think?”

“He thinks he heard gunshots just before the stampede began. He is going to look.”

“He’s going to contact his fellow red men,” Isaac muttered, “and tell them where to find some nice white scalps.”

“I think it’s all ridiculous,” Morton said petulantly. “I think we should give it up and stop these wild chases.”

The shock of the stampede must have unnerved him, Johnson thought. He watched Morton poke through the mud, looking for his sketch pad.

Little Wind was gone an hour, and he came back riding hard.

“One camp,” he said, pointing north. “Two men, two or three ponies. One fire. No tent. Many rifle shells.” He opened his hand, and a cascade of copper jackets tumbled down in the sunlight.

“Well, I’ll be!” Sternberg said.

“It’s Marsh’s men,” Cope said grimly.

“Did you see them?” Morton asked.

Little Wind shook his head. “Left many hours.”

“Which way did they go?”

Little Wind pointed east. The same direction they were going.

“Then we’ll come across them again,” Cope said. He clenched his fists. “I’d enjoy that.”

Badlands

The Judith River, a tributary of the Missouri, flowed from the Little Belt Mountains and connected with large creeks in a confusing meander of waterways.

“There’s damn good trout in those waters,” said Cookie. “Not that I expect we will be fishing.”

The Judith River basin itself consisted of badlands, rocky outcrops that formed, for the eye, into mysterious shapes, demons and dragons. A place of gargoyles, said Toad.

Toad’s arm was now swollen and red; he complained of pain. Sternberg said privately he thought Toad would have to be sent back to Fort Benton, where the army surgeon could amputate his arm with the benefit of whiskey and a bone saw. But nobody mentioned it to Toad.

The scale of the rock formations in the Judith badlands was enormous; great cliffs—Cope called them “exposures”—reaching hundreds of feet into the air, in places towering more than a thousand feet above them. With pastel bands of pink and black rock, the land had a stark and desolate beauty. But it was a harsh land: there was little water nearby, and it was mostly brackish, alkaline, poisonous. “Hard to believe this was a great inland lake, surrounded by swamps,” Cope said, staring at the soft sculpted rock. Cope always seemed to see more than the others did. Cope and also Sternberg: the tough fossil hunter had the practiced eye of a plains explorer; he always seemed to know where to find game and water.

“We’ll have water enough here,” he predicted. “It won’t be the water that troubles us. It’ll be the dust.”

There was indeed an alkaline bite in the air, but the others did not mind it so much. Their immediate problem was to find a campsite near a suitable place for excavation, and this was no mean task. Moving the wagons over the terrain—there were no wagon trails here—was difficult and sometimes dangerous work.

They were also nervous about Indians, because they saw plenty of signs around them: pony tracks, abandoned cook fires, the occasional antelope carcass. Some of the cook fires looked recent, but Sternberg professed complete indifference. Even the Sioux weren’t crazy enough to stay in the badlands for long. “Only a crazy white man’d spend all summer here,” he laughed. “And only a crazy, rich white man would spend his vacation here!” He slapped Johnson on the back.

For two days they pushed the wagons up hills and braced them down hills, until finally Cope announced that they were in a suitable bone region, and they could make camp at the next good site they found. Sternberg suggested the top of the nearby rise, and they pushed the wagons up a final time, coughing in the dust of the wheels. Toad, unable to help because of his swollen arm, said, “Do you smell fire?” but no one did.

As they came to the top of the rise, they had a view over the plains and a meandering stream, with cottonwoods growing alongside it. And stretching as far as they could see were white teepees, each with a thin column of smoke issuing from them.

“My God,” Sternberg said. He quickly estimated the number.

“What do you make it?” Isaac said.

“I make it more’n a thousand teepees. My God,” Sternberg said again.

“I am persuaded,” said Isaac, “that we are dead men.”

“I reckon,” said Cookie Hill. He spat on the ground.

Sternberg didn’t think so. The question was what tribe of Indians they were. If they were Sioux, then Isaac was right; they were as good as dead. But the Sioux were supposed to still be farther south.

“Who cares where they’re supposed to be?” Cookie said. “They’re here, and so are we. It’s that Little Weasel, he led us here—”

“That’s enough. Let’s go about our business,” Cope said. “Make our camp, and act naturally.”

“After you, Professor,” Cookie said.

It was difficult to act naturally with a thousand teepees spread on the plains below, and the associated horses, fires, people. They had of course already been spotted; some of the Indians were pointing and gesturing.

By the time they had unloaded the cook wagon and started the fire for the night, a group of mounted horsemen splashed across the stream and rode up toward their camp.

“Here they come, boys,” Cookie muttered.

Johnson counted twelve riders. His heart pounded as he heard their horses approach. They were superb horsemen, riding fast and easily, trailing a cloud of dust. They whooped and shouted savagely as they came closer.

“These were my first Indians,” he later remembered, “and I was consumed in equal parts with curiosity and terror. I confess that to see the swirling dust cloud, and hear their savage shrieks, increased the latter, and for the thousandth time on this journey I regretted the rashness of my wager.”

The Indians were now close and rode in circles around the wagon, whooping enthusiastically. They knew the white men were frightened, and enjoyed it. Finally, they drew up, and their leader repeated several times, “Howah, howah.” He said it in a grunting sort of way.

Johnson whispered to Sternberg, “What did he say?”

“He said, ‘How.’”

“What does that mean?”

“It means, ‘I agree, everything is fine, I feel friendly.’”

Johnson could now see the Indians clearly. Like many other first-time observers of Plains Indians, he was astonished at how handsome they were—“tall and muscularly endowed, their faces possessing pleasing regular features, their bearing naturally dignified and proud, their persons and buckskin garments surprisingly clean.”

The Indians were not smiling, but they seemed friendly enough. They all said “Howah” in turn, and looked around at the camp. There was an awkward silence. Isaac, who knew some Indian language, ventured a few words of greeting.

Instantly their faces darkened. They wheeled on their horses and rode away, disappearing in an alkaline dust cloud.

Sternberg said, “You goddamn fool, what did you say?”

“I said, ‘I bid you welcome and wish you success and happiness in the journey of your life.’”

“What’d you say it in?”

“Mandan.”

“You goddamn fool, Mandan’s Sioux talk. Those’re Crows!”

Even Johnson had been long enough in the plains to know of the traditional enmity between the Sioux and the Crow tribes. The hatred between them was deep and implacable, especially since in recent years the Crows had allied themselves with the white soldiers in the fight against the Sioux.

“Well, Mandan’s all I know,” Isaac protested, “so I said it.”

“You goddamn fool,” Sternberg repeated. “If we didn’t before, now we have a problem.”

“I thought Crows never killed white people,” Morton said, licking his lips.

“That’s what the Crows say,” Sternberg said, “but they tend to exaggerate. Oh yes, lads, we have a problem.”

“Well, we’ll go down there and straighten it out,” Cope said, in his usual forthright manner.

“After our last supper?” Cookie said.

“No,” Cope said. “Now.”

The Indian Village

Aboriginal peoples had hunted on the Western plains of America for more than ten thousand years. They had seen the glaciers recede and the land become warm; they had witnessed (and perhaps accelerated) the disappearance of the great mastodons, the hippo, and the feared saber-toothed tiger. They had hunted when the land was heavily forested, and they hunted now that it was a sea of grass. Through all the thousands of years, through all the changes of game and climate, Indians had continued to live as nomadic hunters on the vast spaces of the land.

The Plains Indians of the nineteenth century were colorful, dramatic, mystical, warlike people. They captured the imagination of all who saw them, and in many ways they stood, in the popular mind, for all American Indians. The antiquity of their rituals, the intricate organization of their way of life, was much admired by liberal thinkers.

But the truth was that the Plains Indian society that Westerners saw was hardly older than the white American nation that now threatened its existence. The Plains Indians were a nomadic hunting society organized around the horse, as were the Mongols of Asia. Yet there had been no horses in America until the Spaniards introduced them three hundred years earlier, changing Plains Indian society beyond recognition.

And even the traditional tribal structures, and tribal rivalries, were less ancient than often imagined. Most authorities believed the Crow Indians were once part of the Sioux nation, living in what is now Iowa; they had migrated west toward Montana, evolved a separate identity, and become the implacable antagonists of their former kin. As one expert wrote, “The Sioux and the Crow are virtually the same in dress, manner, habits, language, customs, values, bearing. This similarity might be thought to form the basis of friendship, yet it only heightens their antagonism.”

It was these Crow Indians that they now rode down to visit.

First impressions of an Indian village were often contradictory. Henry Morton Stanley, the Welsh explorer and journalist who in 1871 famously found Dr. David Livingstone in Africa, entered Black Kettle’s village with Custer and found it filthy: “so foul, indeed, as to defy description.” Robes on the teepee floors were crawling with vermin; excremental odors assailed him.

Other first-time observers were unnerved to see Indians roasting a dog over a fire, or chewing bloody buffalo steaks. But Johnson’s first impressions, riding that evening into the Crow village, seem more revealing about him than about the Crow:

“Anyone who imagines,” he wrote,

that the nomadic Indian lives a free-spirited and open life will receive a rude shock on visiting his place of habitation. The Plains Indian village is, like the life of the warrior, regimented in the extreme. Teepees are regularly designed of elk hide, regularly set out, and regularly arranged according to fixed rules; there are rules for placement of the (back) rests inside the teepees, and rugs, and rawhide containers; there are rules for the designs that decorate the robes and clothes and teepees; rules for the making of fires and the manners of cooking; rules for the behavior of the Indian at every moment and at all times in his life; rules for war and rules for peace and rules for hunting and rules for behavior before hunting; and all these rules are followed with a rigid fixity and a serious determination which forcibly reminds the observer that one is among a warrior race.

They tethered their horses at the edge of the village and walked in, slowly. Curious stares greeted them from every side; laughing children fell silent, paused to watch the strangers pass; odors of cooking venison and the peculiar pungency of drying hides assaulted their nostrils. At length a young brave came up and made some elaborate movements with his hands.

“What’s he doing?” whispered Johnson.

“Sign language,” Toad said, cradling his swollen arm with the other.

“You understand it?”

“No,” Toad said.

But Little Wind did, and he spoke to the brave in the Crow language. The Indian led them deeper into the village, to a large teepee where five older warriors sat around a fire in a semicircle.

“The chiefs,” Toad whispered. At a gesture from one, the white men all sat in a semicircle facing them.

“Then began,” wrote Johnson,

the most protracted negotiations I ever experienced in my life. The Indians love to talk and are in no rush. Their curiosity, the formal elaborateness of ceremonial speech, and the lack of urgency with regard to time peculiar to them, all conspired to a meeting of acquaintance that clearly would take all night. Everything was discussed: who we were (including our names, and the meaning of our names); where we had come from (the cities, the meanings of the names of cities, what routes we had taken, how we had chosen the route, and what experiences we had had on our journey); why we were here (the reason for our interest in the bones, and how we planned to excavate them, and what we planned to do with them); what we were wearing as clothing and why, the meaning of rings and trinkets and belt buckles, and so on ad infinitum et ad nauseam.

If the powwow seemed interminable, it must have in part been because of the tension the whites felt. Sternberg noted that “they didn’t care overly for our answers.” It soon emerged that they knew about Cope, had been told that he was unfriendly to Indians, and had killed his own father. The Crow had been advised to kill him in turn.

Cope was furious, but kept his temper. Smiling pleasantly, he said to the others, “Do you see the villainy, the black scoundrel’s techniques, finally exposed to all eyes? Do I harass Marsh? Do I attempt at every juncture to impede his progress? Am I jealous of him? I ask you. I ask you.”

The chiefs could tell that Cope was upset, and Little Wind hastened to assure them of an error.

The Indians insisted there was no error: Cope had been described well and true.

Who has said these things about him? Little Wind asked.

Red Cloud Agency.

Red Cloud Agency is a Sioux agency.

This is so.

The Sioux are your enemy.

This is so.

How can you believe the words of an enemy?

The discussion dragged on, hour after hour. At length, to control his temper or perhaps his nerves, Cope began to sketch. He drew the chief, and the likeness aroused great interest. The chief wanted the sketch, and Cope gave it to him. The chief wanted Cope’s pen. Cope refused.

“Professor,” Sternberg said, “I think you’d better give him your pen.”

“I will do nothing of the sort.”

“Professor . . .”

“Very well.” Cope handed over the pen.

Shortly before dawn, the discussion turned from Cope to Toad. Some kind of new chief was called for, a very pale, very thin man with a wild look in his eyes. His name was White Deer. White Deer looked at Toad, and muttered something, and left.

The Indians then announced they wanted Toad to remain in the camp, and for the others to leave.

Cope refused.

“It’s all right,” Toad said. “I will serve as a kind of hostage.”

“They may kill you.”

“But if they kill me,” Toad pointed out, “they’ll almost certainly kill all of you soon after.”

In the end, Toad remained, and the others left.

From their camp, they looked down on the Indian encampment as dawn broke. The braves had begun whooping and riding in circles; a large fire was being built.

“Poor Toad,” Isaac said. “They’ll torture him for sure.”

Cope watched through his glass, but the smoke obscured everything. Now a chanting began; it kept up until nine in the morning, when it abruptly stopped.

A party of braves rode up to the camp, bringing Toad with them on a spare horse. They came upon Cope washing his false teeth in a tin bowl. The Indians were entranced and, before Toad dismounted, insisted that Cope pop his lifelike teeth in and then take them out again.

Cope did this several times, contrasting a dazzling smile with a gaping, toothless hole, and the Indians departed much entertained.

Dazed, Toad watched them go.

“That one chief, White Deer, did magic on my hand,” he said, “to cure it.”

“Did it hurt?”

“No, they just waved feathers over it and chanted. But I had to eat some awful stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“I don’t know, but it was awful. I’m very tired now.” He curled up beneath the wagon, and slept for the next twelve hours.

Toad’s arm was improved the following morning. In three days he was cured. Each morning, the Indians would ride up to see Cope. And they would watch Funny Tooth wash his teeth. The Indians would often hang around the camp, but they never took anything. And they were very interested in what the whites were doing: finding bones.

Bone Country

With these preliminary problems resolved, Cope was impatient to begin the work. The students found him standing in the dawn chill, glancing up at the cliffs near the camp, which were being struck with light for the first time that day. Abruptly, he leapt up and said, “Come along, come along. Quickly now, this is the best time to look.”

“Look for what?” the students asked, surprised.

“You’ll know soon enough.” He led them to the cliff face exposure nearest the camp and pointed. “See anything?”

They looked. They saw bare, eroded rock, predominantly gray in color with pink and dark gray striations highlighted in the weak morning sunlight. That was all they saw.

“No bones?” Cope asked.

Encouraged by this hint, they looked hard, squinting in the light. Toad pointed. “How about up there?”

Cope shook his head. “Just embedded boulders.”

Morton pointed. “Near the rise there?”

Cope shook his head. “Too high, don’t look up there.”

Johnson tried his luck. “Over there?”

Cope smiled. “Dead sagebrush. Well, it seems you can see everything but the bones. Now: look in the middle of the cliff, for a cliff this high will have its Cretaceous zone near the middle—a lower cliff, it might be nearer the top—but this one, it will be in the middle—just below that pink striation band there. Now run your eye along the band until you see a kind of roughness, see there? That oval patch there? Those are bones.”

They looked, and then they saw: the bones caught the sunlight ever so differently from the rock, rounded edges more muted than jagged stone, their color a shade different. Once pointed out, it became easy: they saw another patch there—and more there—and there again—and still more. “We realized,” wrote Johnson,

that the entire cliff face was fairly stuffed to bursting with bones, which previously were invisible to us, yet now were as plain as the nose on your face. But as Professor Cope says, we had to learn to recognize the nose on your face, too. He likes to say, “Nothing is obvious.”

They were discovering dinosaurs.

In 1876, scientific acceptance of dinosaurs was still fairly recent; at the turn of the century, men did not suspect the existence of these great reptiles at all, although the evidence was there to see.

Back in July 1806, William Clark, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, explored the south bank of the Yellowstone River, in what would later become Montana Territory, and found a fossil “semented [sic] within the face of the rock.” He described it as a bone three inches in circumference and three feet in length, and considered it the rib of a fish, although it was probably a dinosaur bone.

More dinosaur bones were found in Connecticut in 1818; they were believed to be the remains of human beings; dinosaur footprints, discovered in the same region, were described as the tracks of “Noah’s raven.”

The true meaning of these fossils was first recognized in England. In 1824, an eccentric English clergyman named Buckland described “the Megalosaurus or Great Fossil Lizard of Stonesfield.” Buckland imagined the fossil creature to be more than forty feet long, “and with a bulk equal to that of an elephant seven feet high.” But this remarkable lizard was considered an isolated specimen.

The following year, Gideon Mantell, an English physician, described “Iguanodon, a newly-discovered Fossil Reptile.” Mantell’s description was based largely on some teeth found in an English quarry. Originally the teeth were sent to Baron Cuvier, the greatest anatomist of his day; he pronounced them the incisors of a rhinoceros. Dissatisfied, Mantell remained convinced that “I had discovered the teeth of an unknown herbivorous reptile,” and eventually demonstrated that the teeth most resembled those of an iguana, an American lizard.

Baron Cuvier admitted his error, and wondered: “Do we not have here a new animal, an herbivorous reptile . . . of another time?” Other fossil reptiles were unearthed in rapid succession: Hylaeosaurus in 1832; Macrodontophion in 1834; Thecodontosaurus and Paleosaurus in 1836; Plateosaurus in 1837. With each new discovery came the growing suspicion that the bones represented a whole group of reptiles that had since vanished from the earth.

Finally, in 1841, another physician and anatomist, Richard Owen, proposed the entire group be called Dinosauria, or “terrible lizards.” The notion became so widely accepted that in 1854, full-size reconstructions of dinosaurs were built in the Crystal Palace in Sydenham, and attained wide popularity with the public. (Owen, knighted by Queen Victoria for his accomplishments, later became a bitter opponent of Darwin and the doctrine of evolution.)

By 1870, the focus of dinosaur hunting shifted from Europe to North America. It had been recognized since the 1850s that there were large numbers of fossils in the American West, but recovery of these giant bones was impractical until the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869.

The following year, Cope and Marsh began their furious competition to acquire fossils from this new region. They undertook their labors with all the ruthlessness of a Carnegie or a Rockefeller. In part this aggressiveness—new to scientific endeavors—reflected the prevailing values of their age. And in part it was a recognition of the fact that dinosaurs were no longer mysterious. Cope and Marsh knew exactly what they were about: they were discovering the full range of a great order of vanished reptiles. They were making scientific history.

And they knew that fame and honor would accrue to the man who discovered and described the largest number.

The two men were consumed by the search. “Hunting for bones,” wrote Johnson, “has a peculiar fascination, not unlike hunting for gold. One never knows what one will find, and the possibilities, the potential discoveries lying in wait, fuels the quest.”

And they did indeed make discoveries. While they dug the hillside, Cope was kept busy on the ground below, sketching, making notes, and classifying. He insisted that the students be meticulous in recording which bones were found in proximity to which others. Shovel and pickax were used to loosen the stone, but they gave way to the smaller tools, which appeared simple enough: hammer, chisel, pick, and brush. Despite the students’ earnestness, there was first a great deal of technique to be learned; they had to learn to choose among the three weights of wide-head hammer, four widths of rock chisel (imported from Germany, explained Cope, for the quality of the cold steel), two sizes of steel points to pick at the stone, and a variety of stiff brushes for whisking away dirt and dust and gravel.

“We’ve come too far not to do this the correct way,” Cope said. “The fossils don’t always give themselves up easily, too.”

One did not just bang a fossilized bone out of the rock, he explained to them. One studied the position of the fossil, tapped the stone with a chisel when necessary, hammered vigorously only rarely. To find the subtle demarcation between bone and stone, it was necessary to see color difference.

“Sometimes it helps just to spit on it,” Cope said. “The moisture heightens the contrast.”

“I’m going to die of thirst pretty quickly,” muttered George Morton.

“And don’t just look at what you are doing,” Cope instructed. “Listen, too. Listen to the sound of the chisel hitting the stone. The higher the note, the harder the stone.”

He also demonstrated the right position to extract the fossils, depending upon the slope of the rock. They worked on their bellies, on their knees, squatting, and sometimes while standing. When the rock face was especially sharp, they hammered in a spike and secured themselves with ropes. They were to understand how the angle of the sun revealed not just the face of the stone but also its fissures and unexpected depths.

Johnson found himself recalling how challenging it had been for him to learn to take photographs; extracting fossils from the grasp of stone without damaging them was far more difficult.

Cope showed them how to position their tools next to the hand that would use those tools and to work as efficiently as possible, for in a day each student would switch from hammer and chisel to pick to brush and back again in all combinations hundreds of times. Left-handers kept their chisels to their right, brushes to their left.

“The work is more tiring than you expect,” he told them.

And, indeed, it was.

“My fingers hurt, my wrists hurt, my shoulders hurt, and also my knees and feet,” said George Morton after the first few days.

“Better you than me,” Cookie said.

As the bones came down to the camp, Cope laid them on a dark wool blanket for contrast, staring at them until he saw how they related to each other. In late July, he announced a new duck-billed Hadrosaurus; a week later, a flying reptile. And then in August they found a Titanosaurus, and finally the teeth of a Champsosaurus. “We are finding wonderful dinosaurs!” exulted Cope. “Wonderful, marvelous dinosaurs!”

The work was exhausting, backbreaking, sometimes dangerous. For one thing, the scale of the landscape was, as in the rest of the West, deceptive. What appeared to be a small cliff exposure turned out, on climbing, to be five or six hundred feet high. Scrambling up these sheer crumbling faces, working halfway up the hill, maintaining balance on the incline, was fatiguing in the extreme. It was a strange world: often, working on these huge rocky faces, they were so far apart they could hardly see each other, but because the land was so quiet and the curving cliffs acted like giant funnels, they could hold clear conversations no louder than a whisper, even within the constant sound of the reverberating pings and soft clicks of hammers striking chisel and chisel striking stone.

At other times, the broader silence and desolation became oppressive. Especially after the Crow moved on, they were uncomfortably aware of the silence.

And Sternberg had been right: in the end, the worst thing about the badlands was the dust. Harshly alkaline, it billowed up with every stab of pick and shovel; it burned the eyes, stung the nose, caked the mouth, caused coughing spasms; it burned in open cuts; it covered clothes and chafed at elbows and armpits and backs of knees; it gritted in sleeping bags; it dusted food, sour and bitter, and flavored coffee; stirred by the wind, it became a constant force, a signature of this harsh and forbidding place.

Their hands, which they needed in order to do everything, especially dig fossils, were soon scraped and calloused, the dust burning in any cracks. Cope insisted they thoroughly wash their hands at the end of the day and dispensed a small dollop of yellowish emollient to rub into their palms and fingers.

“Smells bad,” Johnson said. “What is it?”

“Clarified bear fat.”

But the dust was everywhere. Nothing they tried worked. Bandanas and facecloths did not help, since they could not protect the eyes. Cookie built a tent to try to keep the dust off the food he was preparing, but it burned down on the second day. They complained to each other for a while, and then after the second week, they no longer mentioned it. It was like a conspiracy of silence. They would no longer talk about the dust.

Once dug out, the fragile bones had to be lowered down with ropes in a difficult, painstaking process. One slip, and the fossils would break free of the ropes and tumble down the hillside, crashing to the ground, smashed beyond value.

At such times, Cope turned waspish, reminding them that the fossils had “lain for millions of years in perfect peace and remarkable preservation, waiting for you to drop them like idiots! Idiots!”

These hot speeches led them to anxiously await some slip by Cope himself, but it never happened. Sternberg finally said that “except for his temper, the professor is perfect, and it seems best to recognize it.”

But the rock was fragile, and breaks in the fossils did occur, even with the most careful handling. Most frustrating of all was a break days or weeks after the fossil was lowered to the ground.

It was Sternberg who first proposed a solution.

When they set out from Fort Benton, they had brought with them several hundred pounds of rice. As the days went on, it became clear that they would never eat all the rice (“at least not the way Stinky cooks it,” Isaac grumbled). Rather than leave it behind, Sternberg boiled the rice to a gelatinous paste, which he poured over the fossils. This novel preservative technique left the fossils looking like snowy blocks—or, as he put it, “gigantic cookies.”

But whatever they called it, the paste provided a protective covering. They had no further breaks.

Around the Fire

Each evening, when the sunlight was fading and the light was soft, making the sculptured terrain look less stark, Cope reviewed with them the finds of the day, and spoke of the lost world in which these giant animals roamed.

“Cope could speak like an orator when he chose to,” noted Sternberg, “and of an evening, the dead gray rocks became dense green jungle, the trickling streams vast vegetation-choked lakes, the clear sky turned close with hot rainclouds, and indeed the entire barren landscape before our eyes was transformed into an ancient swamp. It was mysterious, when he spoke that way. We felt goose-bumps and a chill on the spine.”

In part, that chill came from the lingering tinge of heresy. Unlike Marsh, Cope was not an open Darwinian, but he appeared to believe in evolution, and certainly in great antiquity. Morton was going to be a preacher, like his father. He asked Cope, “as a man of science,” how old the world was.

Cope said he had no idea, in the mild way he had when he was concealing something. It was the opposite side of his snapping temper, this almost lazy indifference, this tranquil, calm voice. This mildness overcame Cope whenever the discussion moved into areas that might be considered religious. A devout Quaker (despite his pugilistic temperament), he found it difficult to tread on the religious feelings of others.

Was the world, Morton asked, six thousand years old, as Bishop Ussher had said?

A great many serious and informed people still believed this date, despite Darwin and the fuss that the new scientists who called themselves “geologists” were making. After all, the trouble with what the scientists said was that they were always saying something different. This year one idea, next year something else. Scientific opinion was ever changing, like the fashions of women’s dress, while the firm and fixed date 4004 BC invited the attention of those seeking greater verity.

No, Cope said, he did not think the world was so recent.

How old, then? asked Morton. Six thousand years? Ten thousand years?

No, Cope said, still tranquil.

Then how much older?

A thousand thousand times as old, said Cope, his voice still dreamy.

“Surely you’re joking!” Morton exclaimed. “Four billion years? That is patently absurd.”

“I know of no one who was there at the time,” Cope said mildly.

“But what about the age of the sun?” Morton said, with a smug look.

In 1871, Lord Kelvin, the most eminent physicist of his day, posed a serious objection to Darwin’s theory. It had not been answered by Darwin, or anyone else, in subsequent years.

Whatever else one might think of evolutionary theory, it obviously implied a substantial period of time—at least several hundred thousand years—to carry out its effects on earth. At the time of Darwin’s publication, the oldest estimates of the age of the earth were around ten thousand years. Darwin himself believed the earth would have to be at least three hundred thousand years old to allow enough time for evolution. The earthly evidence, from the new study of geology, was confusing and contradictory, but it seemed at least conceivable that the earth might be several hundred thousand years old.

Lord Kelvin took a different approach to the question. He asked how long the sun had been burning. At this time, the mass of the sun was well established; it was obviously burning with the same processes of combustion as were found on earth; therefore one could estimate the time it would take to consume the mass of the sun in a great fire. Kelvin’s answer was that the sun would burn up entirely within twenty thousand years.

The fact that Lord Kelvin was a devoutly religious man and therefore opposed to evolution could not be thought to have biased his thinking. He had investigated the problem from the impersonal vantage point of mathematics and physics. And he had concluded, irrefutably, that there was simply not enough time for evolutionary processes to take place.

Corroborating evidence derived from the warmth of the earth. From mine shafts and other drilling, it was known that the earth’s temperature increased one degree for every thousand feet of depth. This implied that the core of the earth was still quite hot. But if the earth had really formed hundreds of thousands of years ago, it would have long since become cool. That was a clear implication of the second law of thermodynamics, and there was no disputing it.

There was only one escape from these physical dilemmas, and Cope echoed Darwin in suggesting it. “Perhaps,” he said, “we do not know everything about the energy sources of the sun and the earth.”

“You mean there may be a new form of energy, as yet unknown to science?” Morton asked. “The physicists say that it is impossible, that the rules governing the universe are fully understood by them.”

“Perhaps the physicists are wrong,” Cope said.

“Certainly someone is wrong.”

“That is true,” Cope said evenly.

If he was open-minded when listening to Morton’s beliefs, he was equally so with Little Wind, the Snake scout.

Early in the bone digging, Little Wind became agitated and objected to their excavations. He said they would all be killed.

“Who will kill us?” Sternberg inquired.

“The Great Spirit, with lightning.”

“Why?” Sternberg asked.

“Because we disturb the burial ground.”

Little Wind explained that these were the bones of giant snakes that had inhabited the earth in ages past, before the Great Spirit had hunted them down and killed them all with bolts of lightning so that man could live on the plains.

The Great Spirit would not want the serpent bones disturbed, and would not look kindly on their adventures.

Sternberg, who did not like Little Wind anyway, duly reported it to Cope.

“He may be right,” Cope said.

“It’s nothing but savage superstition,” Sternberg snorted.

“Superstition? Which part do you mean?”

“All of it,” Sternberg said. “The very idea.”

Cope said, “The Indians think these fossils are the bones of serpents, which is to say reptiles. We think they were reptiles, too. They think these creatures were gigantic. So do we. They think these gigantic reptiles lived in the distant past. So do we. They think the Great Spirit killed them. We say we don’t know why they disappeared—but since we offer no explanation of our own, how can we be sure theirs is superstition?”

Sternberg walked away, shaking his head.

Bad Water

Cope chose his campsites for convenience to fossils, and no other reason. One difficulty with their first site was lack of water. Nearby Bear Creek was so badly polluted they did not draw water from there after the first night, when they all experienced dysentery and cramps. And the water elsewhere in the badlands was, in Sternberg’s words, “like a dense solution of Epsom salts.”

So they drew all their water from springs. Little Wind knew several, the nearest a two-mile ride from camp. Since Johnson was fussiest about the water, which he used for his photographic processes, it became his job to ride to and from the spring each day, and fetch the water.

Someone always accompanied him on these excursions. They had seen no trouble with the Crows, and the Sioux were still presumed to be far south, but these were Indian hunting grounds, and they never knew when they might meet small parties of hostile Indians. Solitary riders were always at risk.

Nevertheless, for Johnson it was the most exhilarating part of the day. To ride out under the great dome of blue sky, with the plains stretching in all directions around him, was an experience that approached the mystical.

Usually, Little Wind rode with him. Little Wind liked to get out of camp, too, but for different reasons. As the days passed and more bones were unearthed, he became increasingly fearful of the retribution of the Great Spirit, or, as he sometimes called it, the Everywhere Spirit—the spirit that existed in all things in the world, and was found everywhere.

They would usually arrive at the spring, located in flat prairie, around three in the afternoon, as the sun was cooling and the light turning yellow. They filled their water bags and slung them onto the horses, and paused to drink directly from the stream, and then rode back.

One day as they reached the spring, Little Wind gestured for Johnson to stay some distance away while he dismounted and inspected the ground around the spring closely.

“What is it?” Johnson said.

Little Wind was moving quickly all around the spring, his nose inches from the ground. Occasionally he picked up a clod of prairie sod, smelled it, and dropped it again.

This behavior always filled Johnson with a mixture of amazement and irritation—amazement that an Indian could read the land as he read a book, and irritation because he could not learn to do it himself, and he suspected that Little Wind, knowing this, added a theatrical touch to his procedures.

“What is it?” Johnson asked again, annoyed.

“Horses,” Little Wind said. “Two horses, two men. This morning.”

“Indians?” The word came out more nervously than he had intended.

Little Wind shook his head. “Horses have shoes. Men have boots.”

They had seen no white men for nearly a month, except their own party. There was little reason for white men to be here.

Johnson frowned. “Trappers?”

“What trappers?” Little Wind gestured to the flat expanse of the plains in all directions. “Nothing to trap.”

“Buffalo hunters?” There was still a trade in buffalo hides, which were fashioned into robes for sale in the cities.

Little Wind shook his head. “Buffalo men don’t hunt on Sioux land.”

That was true, Johnson thought. To invade the Sioux lands looking for gold was one thing, but buffalo hunters would never take the risk.

“Then who are they?”

“Same men.”

“What same men?”

“Same men at Dog Creek.”

Johnson dismounted. “The same men whose camp you found, back at Dog Creek? How do you know that?”

Little Wind pointed in the mud. “This one boot crack heel. Same heel. Same man.”

“I’ll be damned,” Johnson said. “We’re being followed.”

“Yes.”

“Well,” he said, “let’s get the water and tell Cope. Maybe he’ll want to do something.”

“No use water here.” Little Wind pointed to the horses, which were standing quietly by the spring.

“I don’t get it,” Johnson said.

“Horses no drink,” Little Wind said.

The horses always drank as soon as they reached the spring. That was the first thing they did, let the horses drink before they filled their water bags.

But Little Wind was right: today the horses were not drinking.

“I’ll be,” Johnson said.

“Water not so good,” Little Wind said. He bent close to the water and sniffed. Suddenly he plunged his arm up to his shoulder into the spring, and pulled out great clumps of a pale green grass. He reached in again, pulled out more. With each clump he removed, the spring flowed more freely.

He named the weed for Johnson, and explained that it would cause sickness if men drank it. Little Wind was speaking quickly, and Johnson did not understand it all, except that apparently it caused fevers and vomiting and men acted crazy, if they didn’t die.

“Bad thing,” he said. “Tomorrow water is good.”

He stared off across the plains.

“We go find those white men?” Johnson said.

“I go,” Little Wind said.

“Me, too,” Johnson said.

They rode at a gallop for nearly an hour in the yellowing afternoon light, and soon they were far from camp. It would be difficult, Johnson realized, to make it back by nightfall.

Periodically, Little Wind would pause, dismount, check the ground, and mount up again.

“How much farther?”

“Soon.”

They rode on.

The sun dropped behind the peaks of the Rockies, and still they rode. Johnson began to worry. He had never been out on the plains at night before, and Cope had repeatedly warned him always to return to camp before dark.

“How much farther?”

“Soon.”

They rode for perhaps fifteen minutes more and stopped again. Little Wind seemed to be stopping more often. Johnson thought it was because it was too dark to see the ground clearly.

“How much farther?”

“You want go back?”

“Me? No, I was just asking how much farther.”

Little Wind smiled. “Get dark, you afraid.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I was just asking. Is it much farther, do you think?”

“No,” Little Wind said. He pointed. “There.”

Beyond a far ridge, they saw a thin line of gray smoke climbing straight into the sky. A campfire.

“Leave horses,” Little Wind said, dismounting. He pulled up a bunch of grass, let the blades fall in the wind. They drifted south. Little Wind nodded, and explained that they must approach the camp downwind or the other men’s horses would smell them.

They crept forward, over the next ridge, lay on their stomachs, and looked down into the valley below.

In the deepening twilight, two men, a tent, a glowing fire. Six horses picketed behind the tent. One of the men was stocky, the other tall. They were cooking an antelope they had killed. Johnson could not see their faces well.

But he found the sight of this solitary camp, surrounded in all directions by miles of open plains, oddly disturbing. Why were they here?

“These men want bones,” Little Wind said, echoing his own thoughts.

And then the tall man leaned close to the fire as he adjusted the leg on the spit, and Johnson saw a face he knew. It was the tough man he had spoken to in the Omaha train station. The man Marsh had spoken to near the cornfields. Navy Joe Benedict.

And then they heard a murmuring voice. The tent flap opened, and a balding, heavyset man emerged. He was rubbing something in his hands—spectacles he was cleaning. The man spoke again, and even from a distance Johnson recognized the slight halt, the formality of the speech.

It was Marsh.

Cope clapped his hands in delight. “So! The learned professor of Copeology has followed us here! What better proof of what I have been saying? The man is not a scientist—he is a dog in the manger. He does not pursue his own discoveries—he seeks to spy on mine. I have neither time nor inclination to spy on him. But Daddy Marsh can come all the way from Yale College to the Territory of Montana just to keep track of me!” He shook his head. “The asylum will yet receive him.”

“You seem amused, Professor,” Johnson said.

“Of course I am amused! Not only is my theory of the man’s dementia amply confirmed—but so long as he is tracking me, he cannot be finding any new bones of his own!”

“I doubt that follows,” Sternberg said soberly. “Marsh has nothing if not money, and his students are not with him. He is probably paying his bone hunters to dig for him simultaneously in three or four territories, even as we speak.”

Sternberg had done some work for Marsh several years before, in Kansas. He was undoubtedly right, and Cope stopped smiling.

“Speaking of finds,” Cookie said, “how did he find us?”

“Little Wind said that these are the same men that were following us back at Dog Creek.”

Isaac leapt up. “See? I told you we were being followed!”

“Sit down, J.C.,” Cope said. He was frowning now, his good humor vanished.

“What are they doing here, anyway?” Cookie said. “They’re not on the square. They’re gonna kill us and take the bones.”

“They’re not going to kill us,” Cope said.

“Well then, take the bones, for sure.”

“They wouldn’t dare. Even Marsh wouldn’t dare.”

But in the darkness of the plains, he sounded unconvinced. There was a silence. They listened to the moan of the night wind.

“They poisoned the water,” Johnson said.

“Yes,” Cope said. “They did.”

“I wouldn’t call that neighborly,” Cookie said.

“True . . .”

“You’ve made some important discoveries, Professor. Discoveries any scientist’d give his left arm to claim as his own.”

“True.”

There was another long silence.

“We surely are a long way from home, out here,” Isaac said. “If something happened to us, who’d be the wiser? They’d just blame the Indians if we never showed back in Fort Benton.”

“They blame Indians.” Little Wind nodded.

“Quite true.”

“Better do something about them,” Isaac said.

“You’re right,” Cope said finally. He stared at the campfire. “We will do something. We will invite them to dinner tomorrow night.”

Dinner with Cope and Marsh

The search for fossils was abandoned the next day in feverish preparation for Marsh. The camp was cleaned, clothes and bodies washed. Sternberg shot a deer for dinner and Cookie roasted it.

Cope was busy with preparations of his own. He picked through the piles of fossils they had found, selecting a piece here, a piece there, setting them aside.

Johnson asked if he could help, but Cope shook his head. “This is a job for an expert.”

“You are selecting finds to show Marsh?”

“In a way. I am making a new creature: Dinosaurus marshiensis vulgaris.”

By the end of the day he had assembled from fragments a passable skull, with two horned projections that stuck out laterally from the jaw like curving tusks.

Isaac said it looked like a wild boar, or a warthog.

“Exactly,” Cope said, excited. “A prehistoric porcine giant. A piglike dinosaur! A pig for a pig!”

“It’s nice,” Sternberg allowed, “but it won’t stand close scrutiny from Marsh.”

“It won’t have to.”

Cope ordered them to lift the skull, which was held together with paste, and under his instructions they moved it first farther from the fire, then closer, then farther again. Next to one side, and to another. Cope stood by the fire, squinted, and then ordered it moved again.

“He’s like a woman decorating his house, and we’re movin’ the furniture,” Cookie said, panting.

It was late afternoon when Cope pronounced himself satisfied with the skull’s position. They all went off to clean up, and Little Wind was dispatched to invite the other camp to join them for dinner. He returned a few minutes later to say that three riders were approaching the camp.

Cope smiled grimly. “I should have known he’d invite himself.”

“There was a theatrical aspect to both men,” observed Sternberg, who had worked for both, “although it manifested differently. Professor Marsh was heavy and solemn, a man of judicious pauses. He spoke slowly and had a way of making the listener hang on his next words. Professor Cope was the opposite—his words came in a tumbling rush, his movements were quick and nervous, and he captivated attention as a hummingbird does, so brilliantly quick you did not want to miss anything. At this meeting—the only face-to-face encounter I ever witnessed—it was clear no love was lost between them, though they were at pains to hide this fact in frosty Eastern formality.”

“To what do we owe this honor, Professor Marsh?” Cope asked when the three men had ridden into camp and dismounted.

“A social visit, Professor Cope,” Marsh said. “We happened to be in the neighborhood.”

“Quite extraordinary, Professor Marsh, considering how large a neighborhood it is.”

“Similar interests, Professor Cope, lead down similar paths.”

“I am astonished you even knew we were here.”

“We didn’t know,” Marsh said. “But we saw your cook fire and came to investigate.”

“Your attention honors us,” Cope said. “You must stay to dinner, of course.”

“We have no wish to intrude,” Marsh said, his eyes darting around the camp.

“And likewise, I am sure we have no wish to detain you on your journey—”

“Since you insist, we will be delighted to stay to dinner, Professor Cope. We accept with gratitude.”

Cookie produced some decent bourbon; as they drank, Marsh continued to look around the camp. His gaze fell on several fossils, and at length, the unusual tusked skull set off to one side. His eyes widened.

“I see you are looking around—” Cope began.

“No, no—”

“Ours must strike you as a very small expedition, compared to the grand scale of your own endeavors.”

“Your outfit appears efficient and compact.”

“We have been fortunate to make one or two significant finds.”

“I’m certain you have,” Marsh said. He spilled his bourbon nervously, and wiped his chin with the heel of his hand.

“As one colleague to another, perhaps you’d enjoy a tour of our little camp, Professor Marsh.”

Marsh’s excitement was palpable, but all he said was, “Oh, I don’t want to pry.”

“I can’t tempt you?”

“I wouldn’t want to be accused of anything improper,” Marsh said, smiling.

“On second thought,” Cope said, “you are correct as always. Let’s forgo a tour, and simply have dinner.”

In that instant, Marsh shot him a look of such murderous hatred that it chilled Johnson to see it.

“More whiskey?” Cope asked.

“Yes, I will have more,” Marsh said, and he extended his glass.

Dinner was a comedy of diplomacy. Marsh reminded Cope of the details of their past friendship, which had begun, of course, in Berlin, of all places, when both men were much younger and the Civil War raged. Cope hastened to add his own warm, confirming anecdotes; they fell all over each other in eagerness to declare their fervent admiration for one another.

“Professor Cope has probably told you how I got him his first job,” Marsh said.

They demurred politely: they had not heard.

“Well, not quite his first job,” Marsh said. “Professor Cope had quit his position as zoology professor at Haverford—quit rather suddenly, as I recall—and in 1868 he was looking to go west. True, Professor Cope?”

“True, Professor Marsh.”

“So I took him down to Washington to meet Ferdinand Hayden, who was planning the Geological Survey expedition. He and Hayden liked each other, and Professor Cope signed on as expedition paleontologist.”

“Very true.”

“Though you never actually accompanied the expedition, I believe,” Marsh said.

“No,” Cope said. “My baby daughter was ill, and my own health not excellent, so I worked from Philadelphia, cataloging the bones the expedition sent back.”

“You have the most extraordinary ability to draw deductions from bones without benefit of having seen them in the actual site or having dug them out yourself.”

Marsh managed to turn this compliment into an insult.

“You are no less talented in just that way, Professor Marsh,” Cope said quickly. “I often wish I had, like you, the ample funds from multiple patrons needed to pay for the large network of bone hunters and fossil scouts you employ. It must be difficult for you to keep up with the quantities of bones sent you in New Haven, and to write all the papers yourself.”

“A problem you face as well,” Marsh said. “I am amazed you are no more than a year behind in your own reporting. You must often be obliged to work with great haste.”

“With great speed, certainly,” Cope said.

“You always had a facile ability,” Marsh said, and he then reminisced about some weeks they had spent as young men in Haddonfield, New Jersey, searching for fossils together. “Those were great times,” he said, beaming.

“Of course we were younger then, and didn’t know what we know now.”

“But even then,” Marsh said, “I remember that if we found a fossil, I was obliged to ponder it for days to deduce its meaning, whereas Professor Cope would simply glance at it, snap his fingers, and give it a name. An impressive display of erudition—despite the occasional error.”

“I recall no errors,” Cope said, “though in the years since then, you have been kind enough to hunt down all my errors and point them out to me.”

“Science is an exacting mistress, demanding truth above all.”

“For myself, I’ve always felt that truth is a by-product of a man’s character. An honest man will reveal the truth with every breath he takes, while a dishonest man will distort in the same way. More whiskey?”

“I believe I’ll have water,” Marsh said. Navy Joe Benedict, sitting by his side, nudged him. “On second thought, whiskey sounds good.”

“You don’t want water?”

“The water in the badlands doesn’t always agree with me.”

“That’s why we draw ours from a spring. Anyway, you were saying, Professor Marsh, about honesty?”

“No, I believe honesty was your subject, Professor Cope.”

Johnson later recorded:

Our fascination at seeing these legendary giants of paleontological science meet head-to-head eventually faded as the evening grew older. It was of interest to note how long they had known each other, and how similar were their backgrounds. Both men had lost their mothers in infancy and had been raised by strict fathers. Both men had evinced a fascination with fossils from early childhood—a fascination that their fathers had opposed. Both men were difficult, lonely personalities—Marsh because he had grown up on a rural farm, Cope because he had been a childhood prodigy who made anatomical notes at the age of six. Both men had followed parallel careers, such that they met in Europe, where they were both abroad studying the fossils of the Continent. At that time, they had been good friends, and now were implacable enemies.

As the hours passed, interest in their banter faded. We were tired from the exertions of the day, and ready for sleep. On Marsh’s side, his roughneck companions looked equally fatigued. And still Cope and Marsh talked on into the night, sniping, bickering, trading insults as pleasantries.

Finally, Toad fell asleep, beside the fire. His loud snores were inescapable proof that these two had lost their audience, and having lost the audience to witness their jibes, they seemed to lose interest in each other.

The evening had dragged to a seemingly undramatic conclusion—no hollering, no gunfire—and too much had been drunk on all sides. Marsh and Cope shook hands, but I noticed that the handshake was extended; one man was holding the other’s hand tightly, not releasing it, as the two men stared hatefully into each other’s eyes, the light from the fire flickering over both their faces. I could not tell which man was the aggressor in this instant, but I could plainly see each man silently swearing his undying enmity toward the other. Then the handshake broke off almost violently and Marsh and his men rode off into the night.

“Sleep with Your Guns Tonight, Boys”

No sooner were they gone over the nearest ridge than Cope was wide awake, alert and energized.

“Break out your guns!” he said. “Sleep with your guns tonight, boys.”

“Why, what do you mean?”

“We’ll have visitors tonight, mark my words.” Cope bunched his fists in his pugilistic way. “That vertebrate vulgarity will be back, crawling in on his belly like a snake for a closer look at my pig skull.”

“You don’t mean to shoot at them?” Isaac said, horrified.

“I do,” Cope said. “They have opposed us and impeded us, they have got the army after us, they have poisoned our water and insulted our persons, and now they are going to steal our finds. Yes, I mean to shoot at them.”

This seemed to them extreme, but Cope was angry and would not be talked out of it.

An hour passed. Most of the camp fell asleep. Johnson was lying next to Cope, and his twisting and turning kept him awake.

Thus he was awake when the first dark figure crept over the ridge.

Cope gave a soft sigh.

A second figure, then a third. The third was heavyset, lumbering.

Cope sighed again, and swung his rifle around.

The figures crept toward the camp, and made for the fossil head.

Cope raised his rifle to shoot. He was a crack shot, and for a horrified moment Johnson thought he really intended to kill his rival.

“Now, Professor—”

“Johnson,” he said quietly, “I have him in my sights. It is within my power to kill a trespassing sneak and thief. Remember this night.”

And Cope raised his rifle higher into the air, and fired twice at the sky, and shouted, “Indians! Indians!”

The cry brought the camp to its feet. Soon rifles were discharged from all sides; the night air was clouded with gun smoke, and acrid with the smell of powder.

Across the camp, they heard the intruders scrambling up the ridge. There was an occasional shout of “Damn you! Damn your eyes!”

Finally, a deep, distinctive voice cried, “Just your way, Cope! It’s a damnable fake! Just your way! A fake!”

And the three men were gone.

The firing stopped.

“I believe we have seen the last of Othy Marsh,” Cope said. Smiling, he rolled over to sleep.

Moving Camp

In early August, they were visited by a party of soldiers passing through the badlands on their way to the Missouri River. Steamboats came as far upriver as Cow Island, where the army maintained a small camp. The soldiers were on their way to reinforce the garrison there.

They were young Irish and German boys, no older than the students, and they seemed amazed to find white men alive in the region. “I surely would pull out of here,” one said.

They brought news of the war, and it was not good: Custer’s defeat was still unavenged; General Crook had fought an inconclusive battle at the Powder River in Wyoming but had seen no Indians since; General Terry had not engaged any large parties of Sioux at all. The war, which the Eastern newspapers had confidently predicted would be over in a matter of weeks, appeared now to be dragging on indefinitely. Some generals were predicting that it would not be resolved for at least a year, and perhaps not even by the end of the decade.

“Trouble with Indians,” one soldier explained, “is when they want to find you they find you—and when they don’t want you to find them, you’d never know they were there.” He paused. “It is their country, after all, but I didn’t say it.”

Another soldier looked at their stacked crates. “You mining here?”

“No,” Johnson said. “These’re bones. We’re digging fossil bones.”

“Sure you are,” the soldier said, grinning broadly. He offered Johnson a drink from his canteen, which was filled with bourbon. Johnson gasped; the soldier laughed. “Makes the miles shorter, I can tell you,” he explained.

The soldiers grazed their horses for an hour with Cope’s party and then went on.

“I surely wouldn’t dawdle here much longer,” their Captain Lawson said. “Best we know, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and his Sioux’ll make for Canada before winter, which means they’ll be here any day now. They find you here, they’ll kill you for sure.”

And with that final advice, he rode off.

(Much later, Johnson heard that when Sitting Bull went north, he killed all the white men he came across, among them the troops stationed at Cow Island, including Captain Lawson.)

“I think we ought to be going,” Isaac said, scratching his chin.

“Not yet,” Cope said.

“We’ve found plenty of bones.”

“That’s so,” Cookie said. “Plenty so far. More’n enough.”

“Not yet,” Cope said, in an icy tone that ended all discussion. As Sternberg noted in his account of the expedition, “We had long since learned there was no purpose served in arguing with him when his mind was made up. Cope’s indomitable will could not be conquered.”

But Cope did decide to break camp and move to another location. For the last three weeks, they had been located at the foot of thousand-foot-high shale cliffs. He had been scouting the area, and he felt there was a more promising fossil location three miles distant.

“Where?” Sternberg said.

Cope pointed. “Up on the plains.”

“You mean on the flat tablelands?”

“That’s right.”

Isaac protested: “But, Professor, it’ll take three days to move out of the badlands, find a new route, and come back in up there.”

“No, it won’t.”

“We can’t scale these cliffs.”

“Yes, we can.”

“A man can’t walk up, a horse can’t ride up, and certainly this wagon can’t be pulled up those cliffs, Professor.”

“Yes, it can. I will show you.”

Cope insisted they pack up at once, and moved two miles to the east, where he proudly pointed to a sloping bank of shale.

It was much gentler than the surrounding cliffs, but still far too steep to negotiate. While there were some level ridges, the shale was loose and crumbling, affording treacherous footing.

Cookie, the teamster, looked at the proposed route and spat tobacco. “Can’t be done, can’t be done.”

“It can,” Cope said, “and it will.”

It took them fourteen hours to climb a thousand feet—backbreaking work, and continuously dangerous. Using shovels and picks, they dug a trail up the side. Then they unloaded the wagon and put everything they could on the horses and got the horses up; now only the wagon remained.

Cookie drove it halfway up the incline from the floor below, but when he arrived at a level ridge so narrow that one wheel was hanging over empty space, he refused to go any farther.

This enraged Cope, who said he would drive the wagon himself: “Not only are you a revolting cook, but you are a wretched teamster!” The others quickly interceded, and Isaac climbed on to drive the wagon.

They had to unhitch the lead horses, and pull the wagon with the remaining two ponies.

Sternberg later described it in The Life of a Fossil Hunter:

Isaac had driven about thirty feet when the inevitable happened. I saw the wagon slowly begin to tip, pulling the ponies over sideways, and then the whole outfit, wagon and horses, began to roll down the slope. Whenever the wheels stuck up in the air, the ponies drew in their feet to their bellies, and at the next turn, stretched out their legs for another roll.

My heart was in my mouth for fear that Isaac would be killed in one of the turns, or that the wagon would roll over [the] precipice below, but after three complete turns, they landed, the horses on their feet, the wagon on its wheels, on a level ledge of sandstone, and stood there as if nothing had happened.

Eventually they unhitched all the horses and pulled the wagon up on ropes, but they succeeded, and late in the day they made camp, on the prairie.

Cope snapped at Cookie, “This dinner better be your best.”

“Just wait and see,” Cookie said. And he served them the usual fare of hardtack, bacon, and beans.

Despite the grumbling, their new camp was a decided improvement. The breeze made it cooler, for they were on the open plains, wrote Johnson, with “a magnificent view of mountains in every direction—to the west the towering craggy Rockies, with white snow gleaming on their peaks; to the south, east, and north, the Judith River, Medicine Bow, Bearpaw, and Sweet Grass Mountains, completely encircling us. Especially in the early morning, when the air was clear and we would see herds of deer and elk and antelope and the mountains beyond, it was a sight of such glory as surely cannot be matched elsewhere in all creation.”

But the herds of deer and antelope were migrating northward, and the snow was creeping down the slopes of the Rockies as the days passed. One morning they awoke to find a thin carpet of snow had fallen during the night, and although it burned off by midday, they could not ignore the inevitable fact. The seasons were changing, fall was coming, and with the fall, the Sioux.

“It’s time to leave, Professor.”

“Not yet,” Cope said. “Not just yet.”

The Teeth

One afternoon, Johnson came across some knobby protuberances of rock, each roughly the size of a fist. He was working in a promising deposit midway up the side of a shale slope, and these knobs got in his way; he pulled several out of the exposed surface, and they tumbled down the hillside, narrowly missing Cope, who was at the base of the cliffs, sketching a newly discovered Allosaurus leg bone. Cope heard them coming and took a practiced step to the side.

“Hey there!” he shouted up the slope.

“Sorry, Professor,” Johnson called sheepishly. One or two rocks continued to fall; Cope moved aside again the other way and dusted himself off.

“Be careful!”

“Yes, sir. Sorry!” Johnson repeated. Gingerly, he returned to his work, digging with his pick around still other rocks, trying to pry them free and—

“Stop!”

Johnson looked down. Cope was scrambling up the hillside toward him like a madman, one of the fallen rocks in each hand.

“Stop! Stop, I say!”

“I’m being careful,” Johnson protested. “Really I—”

“Wait!” Cope slid several yards down the slope. “Do nothing! Touch nothing!” Still shouting, he slid backwards, disappearing in a dust cloud.

Johnson waited. After a moment, he saw Professor Cope scrambling out of the dust, coming up the hill with frenzied energy.

Johnson thought he must be very angry. It was foolish and nearly impossible to climb straight up the hill; they had all learned that long ago. The surface was too sheer and too friable; a climber had to zigzag his way up, and even that was so difficult they usually preferred a detour of as much as a mile to find an easy route to the top, and from there to descend to where they wanted to go.

Yet here was Cope scrambling straight up as if his life depended upon doing so. “Wait!”

“I’m waiting, Professor.”

“Don’t do anything!”

“I’m not doing anything, Professor.”

At length Cope arrived beside him, covered in dirt, gasping for breath. But he did not hesitate. He wiped his face with his sleeve and peered at the excavation.

“Where is your camera?” he demanded. “Why don’t you have your camera? I want a picture in situ.”

“Of these rocks?” Johnson asked, astonished.

“Rocks? You think these are rocks? They are nothing of the sort.”

“Then what are they?”

“They are teeth!” Cope exclaimed.

Cope touched one, and traced with his finger the gentle hills and indentations of the cusp pattern. He placed the two he held next to each other, then found a third at Johnson’s feet and set it in a row with the other two; it was clear from their similarity in size and form that they went together.

“Teeth,” he repeated. “Dinosaur teeth.”

“But they are enormous! This dinosaur must be of fantastic size.”

For a moment the two men silently contemplated just how large such a dinosaur must have been—the jaw needed to hold rows of such large teeth, the thick skull needed to match such a massive jaw, the enormous neck the width of a stout oak to lift and move such a skull and jaw, the gigantic backbone commensurate to the neck, with each vertebra as big around as a wagon wheel, with four staggeringly huge and thick legs to support such a beast. Each tooth implied an enormity of every bone and every joint. An animal that large might even need a long tail to counterweight its neck, in fact.

Cope stared across the rocky expanse and beyond, into his own imagination and knowledge. For a moment his usual ferocious confidence gave way to quiet wonder. “The full creature must be at least twice the dimensions of any previously known,” he said, almost to himself.

They had already made several discoveries of large dinosaurs, including three examples of the genus Monoclonius, a horned dinosaur that resembled a gigantic rhinoceros. Monoclonius sphenocerus, one of the specimens, was estimated by Cope to stand seven feet tall at the hip joint, and to be twenty-five feet long, including the tail.

Yet this new dinosaur was far larger than that. Cope measured the teeth with his steel calipers, scratched some calculations on his sketch pad, and shook his head. “It doesn’t seem possible,” he said, and measured again. And then he stood looking across the expanses of rock, as if expecting to see the giant dinosaur appear before him, shaking the ground with each step. “If we are making discoveries such as this one,” he said to Johnson, “it means that we have barely scratched what is possible to learn. You and I are the first men in recorded history to glimpse these teeth. They will change everything we think we know about these animals, and much as I hesitate to say such a thing, man becomes smaller when we realize what remarkable beasts went before us.”

Johnson saw then that all that was done in Cope’s mission—all that even he, Johnson, did now—would have meaning to scientists in the future.

“Now, your camera,” Cope reminded him. “We must record this moment and place.”

Johnson went off to collect his equipment, from the flat plains above. When he returned, careful not to fall, Cope was still shaking his head. “Of course you can’t be sure from teeth alone,” he said. “Allometric factors may be misleading.”

“How big do you make it?” Johnson asked. He glanced at the sketch pad, now covered with calculations, some scratched out and done again.

“Seventy-five, possibly one hundred feet long, with a head perhaps thirty feet above the ground.”

And right there he gave it the name, Brontosaurus, “thundering lizard,” because it must have thundered when it walked. “But perhaps,” he said, “I should call it Apatosaurus, or ‘unreal lizard.’ Because it is hard to believe such a thing ever existed . . .”

Johnson took several plates, up close and from farther away, with Cope in all of them. They hurried back to camp, told the others of their discovery, and then in the fading twilight paced out the dimensions of Brontosaurus—a creature as long as three horse-drawn wagons, and as tall as a four-story building. It made the imagination run wild. It was altogether astonishing, and Cope announced that “this discovery alone justifies our entire time in the West,” and that they had made “a momentous discovery, in these teeth. These are,” Cope said, “the teeth of dragons.”

The trouble the teeth would soon cause them, they could not have imagined.

Around the Campfire

Any discovery led Cope to wax philosophical around the campfire at night. Each man had examined the teeth, felt their ridges and knobs, weighed their heft in one hand. The discovery of the gigantic Brontosaurus provoked an unusual degree of speculation.

“There are so many things in nature we would never imagine,” Cope said. “At the time of this Brontosaurus, the glacial ice had receded and our entire planet was tropical. There were fig trees in Greenland, palm trees in Alaska. The vast plains of America were then vast lakes, and where we are sitting now was at the bottom of a lake. The animals we find were preserved because they died and sank to the bottom of the lake, where muddy sediment silted over them, and that sediment in turn compressed into rock. But who would have conceived such things until the evidence for them was found?”

No one spoke. They stared at the crackling fire.

“I am thirty-six years old, but at the time I was born,” Cope said, “dinosaurs were unknown. All the generations of mankind had been born and died, lived and inhabited the earth, and none ever suspected that long, long before them, life on our planet was dominated by a race of gigantic reptilian creatures who held sway for millions upon millions of years.”

George Morton coughed. “If this is so, then what about man?”

There was an uncomfortable silence. Most discussions of evolution sidestepped the question of man. Darwin himself had not dealt with man for more than a decade after his book was published.

“You know of the German finds in the Neander Valley?” Cope asked. “No? Well, back in ’56 they discovered a complete skull in Germany—heavy-boned, with brutish brow ridges. The strata is disputed, but it seems to be very old. I myself saw the find in Europe in ’63.”

“I heard the Neander skull was an ape, or a degenerate,” Sternberg said.

“That is unlikely,” Cope said. “Professor Venn in Düsseldorf has devised a new method of measuring the brain size of skulls. It’s quite simple: he fills the brain case with mustard seeds, then pours the seeds out into a measuring vessel. His researches show that the Neander skull held a larger brain than we possess today.”

“You are saying this Neander skull is human?” Morton said.

“I don’t know,” Cope said. “But I do not see how one can believe that dinosaurs evolved, and reptiles evolved, and mammals such as the horse evolved, but that man sprang fully developed without antecedents.”

“Aren’t you a Quaker, Professor Cope?”

Cope’s ideas were still unacceptable to most faiths, including the Religious Society of Friends, which was the Quakers’ formal name.

“I may not be,” Cope said. “Religion explains what man cannot explain. But when I see something before my eyes, and my religion hastens to assure me that I am mistaken, that I do not see it at all . . . No, I may no longer be a Quaker, after all.”

Leaving the Badlands

The morning of August 26 was distinctly chilly as they set out on the one-day journey to Cow Island, located at one of the few natural fords along a two-hundred-mile stretch of the Missouri River, where the Missouri Breaks formed a barrier on each side. The island also served as a steamboat landing, and it was here Cope planned to meet the steamboat that came up from St. Louis. They were all eager to leave, and frankly worried about Indians, but they had too many fossils to take with them in the wagon. Nothing would do but to make two trips. Cope marked the most precious box, the one with the Brontosaurus teeth, with a subtle X on one side.

“I’m going to leave this one here,” Cope said, “for the second trip.”

Johnson said he didn’t understand. Why not take it on the first trip?

“The chances we get raided on our first leg are probably better than the chances the second load will get discovered here,” he said. “Plus we should be able to pick up some extra hands at Cow Island to protect us on the second trip.”

Their initial journey was uneventful; they reached Cow Island in the early evening and dined with the army troops stationed there. Marsh and his men had gone down the Missouri on the previous steamer, after warning the troops of “Cope’s cutthroats and vagabonds,” who might appear later.

Captain Lawson laughed. “I think Mr. Marsh bears no love for your party,” he said.

Cope affirmed that was the case.

The steamboat was due in two days, but the schedule was uncertain, especially so late in the year. It was imperative that they make their final trip to the plains camp the following day. Cope would remain in Cow Island, repacking the fossils for the steamboat journey, while Little Wind and Cookie drove the wagon back in the morning under Sternberg’s supervision.

But early the next morning, Sternberg awoke with severe chills and fever, a recurrence of his malaria. Isaac was too jumpy about Indians to go back, Cookie and Little Wind too unreliable to go unsupervised. There was the question as to who would lead the expedition.

Johnson said, “I’ll lead it.”

It was the moment he had been waiting for. Summer on the plains had toughened him, but he had always been under the supervision of older and more experienced men. He longed for a chance to prove himself on his own, and this short trip seemed the perfect opportunity for independence, and a fitting conclusion to the summer’s adventures.

Toad felt the same way. He immediately said, “I’ll go, too.”

“You two shouldn’t make the trip alone,” Cope said. “I haven’t been able to find any extra hands. The soldiers are unavailable to us.”

“We won’t be alone. We’ll have Cookie and Little Wind.”

Cope frowned. He drummed his fingers nervously on his sketchbook.

“Please, Professor. It’s important that you repack the fossils. We will be fine. And the day is passing as we stand here discussing it.”

“All right,” Cope said finally. “This is against my better judgment, but all right.”

Delighted, Johnson and Toad left at seven that morning, with Cookie and Little Wind driving the wagon.

Cope organized the wooden boxes of fossils, repacking those not sufficiently safe to suffer the depredations of the steamboat’s stevedores. Isaac looked after Sternberg, who was delirious most of the time; he boiled him a tea made of the bark of willow branches, which he said helped with fevers. Morton assisted Cope.

Six or seven other passengers waited at Cow Island for the steamboat. Among them was a Mormon farmer named Travis and his young son. They had come to Montana to bring the gospel to the settlers, but had had little success, and were disgruntled.

“What you got in those crates there?” Travis asked.

Cope looked up. “Fossil bones.”

“What for?”

“I study them,” Cope said.

Travis laughed. “Why study bones when you can study living animals?”

“These are the bones of extinct animals.”

“That can’t be.”

“Why not?” Cope asked.

“Are you a God-fearing man?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Do you believe God is perfect?”

“Yes, I do.”

Travis laughed again. “Well then, you must agree there can be no extinct animals, because the good Lord in His perfection would never allow a line of His creatures to become extinct.”

“Why not?” Cope asked.

“I just told you.” Travis looked annoyed.

“You just told me your belief about how God goes about His business. But what if God attains His perfection by degrees, casting aside His past creations in order to create new ones?”

“Men may do that, because men are imperfect. God does not, because He is perfect. There was only one Creation. Do you think God made mistakes in His Creation?”

“He made man. Didn’t you just say man is imperfect?”

Travis glowered. “You’re one of those professors,” he said. “One of those educated fools who has departed from righteousness to blasphemy.”

Cope was in no mood for theological dispute. “Better an educated fool than an uneducated fool,” he snapped.

“You are doing the work of the Devil,” Travis said, and he kicked one of the fossil crates.

“Do that again,” Cope said, “and I’ll beat your brains out.”

Travis kicked another crate.

In a letter to his wife, Cope wrote:

I am dreadfully ashamed of what occurred next, and can offer no excuse save the effort I had expended in collecting these fossils, their priceless value, and my own fatigue after a summer in the heat and bugs and searing alkali of the Bad Lands. To be confronted by this stupid bigot was too much for me, and my patience abandoned me.

Morton described what happened directly:

Without preamble or warning, Cope fell upon this man Travis and pounded him into insensibility. It could not have taken more than a minute at most, for Professor Cope was of a pugilistic disposition. Between blows, he would say “How dare you touch my fossils! How dare you!” and at other times he would say scornfully “In the name of religion!” The fight ended when the soldiers pulled Cope off the poor Mormon gentleman, who had said nothing other than what a great many people in the world thought to be utter and indisputable truth.

This was certainly still so in 1876. Much earlier in the century, Thomas Jefferson had carefully concealed his own view that fossils represented extinct creatures. In Jefferson’s day, public espousal of belief in extinction was considered heresy. Attitudes had since changed in many places, but not everywhere. It was still controversial to espouse evolution in certain parts of the United States.

Soon after the fight ended, the steamboat, the Lizzie B., rounded the bend and whistled her imminent arrival. All eyes were on the boat, except for those of one soldier who glanced back across the plains and shouted, “Look there! Horses!”

And from across the plains, two riderless horses approached.

“My heart sank,” Cope wrote in his journal, “to imagine what this might mean.”

They quickly mounted up and rode out to meet them. As they came closer they saw Cookie, bent over, clutching the saddle, near death. A half dozen Indian arrows pierced his body; blood streamed freely from his wounds. The other horse belonged to Johnson: there was blood on the saddle, and arrows were stuck in the leather.

The army soldiers got Cookie off the horse and laid him on the ground. His lips were swollen and crusted dry; they gave him sips from the canteen until he could speak.

“What happened?” Cope said.

“Indians,” Cookie said. “Damn Indians. Nothing we could—”

And he coughed blood, fitfully, writhing with the effort, and died.

“We must return at once and search for survivors,” Cope said. “And our bones.”

Captain Lawson shook his head. He yanked one arrow from the saddle. “These’re Sioux arrows,” he said.

“So?”

The captain nodded toward the plains. “There won’t be anything to go back for, Professor. I’m sorry, but if you find your friends at all—which I doubt—they’ll be scalped and mutilated and left to rot on the plains.”

“There must be something we can do.”

“Bury this ’un and say a prayer for the others is about all,” Captain Lawson said.

The next morning, they mournfully loaded their fossils onto the steamboat and headed back down the Missouri. The nearest telegraph station was in Bismarck, Dakota Territory, which was nearly five hundred miles to the east, on the Missouri. When the Lizzie B. stopped there, Cope sent the following cable to Johnson’s family in Philadelphia:

I profoundly regret to inform you of the death of your son William and three other men yesterday, August 27, in the Bad Lands of the Judith Basin, Montana Territory, at the hands of hostile Sioux Indians. My sincere condolences.

Edward Drinker Cope, U.S. Paleontologist.

Part III

On the Plains

From the journal of William Johnson:

Our enthusiasm was absolute, as we set out on the morning of August 27 to collect the remainder of the fossils. There were four in our party: Little Wind, the Crow scout, Toad and myself, riding a little behind, surveying the ground ahead with watchful eyes, and finally Cookie, the teamster, whipping and cursing his animals as he drove the wagon across the prairie. Our journey would take us twelve miles to the Bad Lands, and twelve miles back again. We rode quickly in order to get there and back to Cow Island by dark.

It was a clear, chill, beautiful morning. Feathery cirrus clouds streaked the blue dome of the sky. The Rocky Mountains directly before us gleamed with white snow, which now reached down from the peaks to the deep crevices. The plains grass whispered in a gentle wind. Herds of pale antelope leapt across the distant horizon.

Toad and I imagined ourselves as pioneers, leading our little expedition into the wilderness, into excitement and dangers to be met bravely. For two Eastern college students of eighteen years, it was hugely exciting. We sat straight in our saddles; we scanned the horizon with narrowed eyes; we kept our hands on our pistol butts and our minds on the business at hand.

As the morning continued, we saw a tremendous amount of game—not only antelope, but elk and bison as well. It was far more game than we had seen in our previous weeks on the plain, and we commented on it to each other.

We had traveled no more than half the distance to the camp—perhaps six miles or so, out into the plains—when Cookie called for a halt. I refused. “No halts until we reach camp,” I said.

“You little bastards will halt if I say so,” Cookie said.

I turned and saw that Cookie was leveling a shotgun at our midsections. That gave him a deal of authority. We halted.

“What is the meaning of this?” I demanded, in a loud voice.

“Shut up, you little blanking blanking so-and-so,” Cookie said, climbing off the wagon. “Now get off your horses, boys.”

I looked at Little Wind, but he avoided our eyes.

“Come on, off of your horses!” Cookie snarled, so we dismounted.

“What do you mean by this outrage?” Toad said, blinking his eyes rapidly.

“End of the line, boys,” Cookie said, shaking his head. “This is where I get off.”

“Where you get off?”

“I can’t help it if you’re too stupid to see the noses on your faces. You seeing all the game today?”

“What about it?”

“Didn’t you ever wonder why you’re seeing so much game? It’s being driven north, that’s why. Look there.” He pointed to the south.

We looked. Streaky lines of smoke rose into the sky in the distance.

“That’s the Sioux camp, you damn fools. That’s Sitting Bull.” Cookie was taking our horses, mounting up.

I looked again. The fires—if that is what they were—were very far away. “But that must be at least a day away from here,” I protested. “We can make our camp, load up, and be back to Cow Island before they reach us.”

“You boys go right ahead,” Cookie said. He was mounted on Toad’s horse, and leading my own.

I looked at Little Wind, but he would not meet my eyes. He shook his head. “Bad day now. Many Sioux warriors in Sitting Bull camp. Kill all Crows. Kill all white men.”

“You heard the man,” Cookie said. “Me, I value my scalp. See you, boys. Come on, Little Wind.” And he started to ride off to the north. A moment later, Little Wind wheeled his horse around and rode off with him.

Toad and I stood by the wagon and watched them leave.

“They planned this,” Toad said. He shook his fist at them as they disappeared toward the horizon. “Bastards! Bastards!”

As for me, my good spirits evaporated. I suddenly realized our predicament—we were two boys alone on the vast and empty plains of the West. “What do we do now?”

Toad was still angry. “Cope paid them in advance, otherwise they would never dare to do this.”

“I know,” I said, “but what are we going to do now?”

Toad squinted at the lines of smoke to the south. “Do you really think those camps are a day away?”

“How would I know?” I cried. “I just said that so they wouldn’t leave.”

“Because the thing about Indians is,” Toad said, “that when they have a large camp, like Sitting Bull’s, they keep hunting and raiding parties out in front of the main camp.”

“How far out in front?” I asked.

“Sometimes one, two days.”

We both stared at the fires again. “I make it six fires, maybe seven,” Toad said. “So that can’t be the main camp. The main camp’d have hundreds of fires.”

I made up my own mind. I was not going to return to Cow Island without the fossils. I could not face the Professor. “We have to get the fossils,” I said.

“Right,” Toad said.

We climbed aboard the wagon and headed west. I had never driven a wagon before, but I made a tolerable job of it. Beside me, Toad whistled nervously. “Let’s sing a song,” he suggested.

“Let’s not,” I said. And so we drove in silence, with our hearts in our mouths.

They got lost.

Their own trail from the day before should have been easy enough to follow, but large stretches of the plains were as flat and featureless as any ocean, and they lost their way several times.

They expected to reach the plains camp before noon, but instead finally found the camp in late afternoon. They loaded the wagon with the remaining ten wooden crates of fossils, which weighed about a thousand pounds in all, plus some final supplies and Johnson’s photographic equipment. He was pleased they had come back, for among the fossils they now packed was of course the box with the X, containing the precious Brontosaurus teeth. “Couldn’t go home without these,” he said.

But by the time they were ready to head back, it was after four o’clock, and growing dark.

They were pretty sure they could never find their way to Cow Island in darkness. That meant they would have to spend the night on the plains—and in another day, the advancing Sioux might come upon them. They were debating just what to do when they heard the savage, bloodcurdling cries of Indians.

“Oh my God,” Toad said.

A dust cloud, stirred up by many riders, appeared on the eastern horizon. It was coming toward them.

They scrambled aboard the wagon. Toad broke out the rifles and loaded them.

“How much ammunition have we got?” Johnson asked.

“Not enough,” Toad said. His hands were shaking, dropping shells.

The whooping grew louder. They could see a single rider, hunched low in the saddle, pursued by a dozen others. But they heard no gunshots.

“Maybe they don’t have any guns,” Toad said hopefully. At that moment, the first arrow whistled past them. “Let’s get out of here!”

“Which way?” Johnson said.

“Any way! Away from them!”

Johnson whipped up the team, and the horses responded with unaccustomed enthusiasm. The wagon rumbled forward at frightening speed, bouncing and tossing over the prairie, the cargo creaking and sliding around in the bed. In the growing darkness, they headed west, away from the Missouri River, away from Cow Island, away from Cope, away from safety.

The Indians closed in on them. The solitary rider drew abreast of their wagon, and they saw it was Little Wind. He was soaked in sweat; his horse lathered. Little Wind came very close to the wagon and gracefully leapt aboard. He smacked his pony, and set it racing to the north.

Several Indians chased it, but the main party continued in pursuit of the wagon.

“Damn Sioux! Damn, damn Sioux!” Little Wind shouted, grabbing a rifle. More arrows streaked through the air. Little Wind and Toad fired at the pursuing Indians. Glancing over his shoulder, Johnson estimated there were a dozen warriors, perhaps more.

The riders came closer, and easily surrounded the wagon on three sides. Toad and Little Wind fired at them, and both hit one at virtually the same time, blasting him backwards off his horse. Another veered closer until Toad took careful aim and fired; the Sioux warrior clutched his eye, slumped forward, arms limp, then toppled sideways off his horse.

One Indian managed to climb aboard the wagon, as Little Wind had done. He was swinging his tomahawk over Johnson when Little Wind shot him in the mouth. In the same instant that the blade cut across Johnson’s upper lip, the warrior’s face burst red and he fell back, off the wagon, and was lost in the dust.

Johnson grabbed his bleeding face, but there was no time for horror; Little Wind turned to him. “Where you drive? Go south!”

“South is the badlands!” It was already quite dark; it would be suicide to enter the abrupt cliffs and gullies of the badlands at night.

“Go south!”

“We’ll die if we go south!”

“We die anyway! Go south!”

And then Johnson realized what he was being told. Their only hope, a slim hope, was to head where the Indians would not follow. He whipped the team, and the wagon plunged southward, toward the badlands.

A mile of open prairie stretched ahead of them, and the Indians again surrounded them on all sides, whooping and shouting. An arrow seared Johnson’s leg, pinning his trouser leg to the wooden wagon seat, but he felt no pain and drove on. It was darker and darker; their guns glowed brightly with each discharge. The Indians, recognizing their plan, pursued them with greater intensity.

Soon Johnson could make out the eroded dark line of the badlands at the edge of the prairie. The flat plains just seemed to drop away into black nothingness. They were approaching at frightful speed.

“Hold on, boys!” he shouted, and without reining his horses, the wagon plunged over the lip, into darkness.

Badlands

Silence, under a waning moon.

Water trickled over his face, onto his lips. He opened his eyes and saw Little Wind leaning close. Johnson raised his head.

The wagon sat upright. The horses snorted softly. They were at the base of dark cliffs, looming high.

Johnson felt a pinching in his leg. He tried to move.

“Stay,” Little Wind said. His voice was tight.

“Is something wro—”

“Stay,” he repeated. He put down his canteen and held out another. “Drink.”

Johnson sipped, sputtered, coughed. The whiskey burned his throat, and some splashed on the slash above his lip, making that burn, too.

“Drink more,” Little Wind said. He was cutting the cloth of Johnson’s trouser leg with a knife. Johnson started to look.

“No look,” Little Wind said, but it was too late.

The arrow had pierced the flesh of his right leg, passing under the skin, pinning him to the seat. The flesh around the wound was puffed and purple and ugly.

Johnson felt a wave of dizziness and nausea. Little Wind grabbed him. “Wait. Drink.”

Johnson took a big drink. The dizziness returned.

“I fix,” Little Wind said, bent over Johnson’s leg. “No look.”

Johnson stared at the sky, at the moon. Thin clouds drifted past. He felt the whiskey.

“What about Toad?”

“Stay now. No look.”

“Is Toad all right?”

“No worry now.”

“Where is he? Let me talk to him!”

“You feel hurting now,” Little Wind said, his body tensing. There was a whacking sound, and Johnson felt a pain so sharp he screamed, his voice echoing off the dark cliffs. Immediately he felt a searing, burning pain that was worse; he could not scream; he gasped for breath.

Little Wind held the arrow up, bloody in the moonlight.

“Finish now. I finish.”

Johnson started to get up, but Little Wind pushed him back. He gave him the arrow. “You keep.” Johnson felt warm blood pouring from the open wound; Little Wind bandaged it with a strip of cloth cut from his bandana.

“Good. Good now.”

Johnson pushed up, felt pain as he stood, but it was bearable; he was all right. “Where’s Toad?”

Little Wind shook his head.

Toad was stretched out in the back of the wagon. One arrow had pierced sideways all the way through his neck; two others were lodged in his chest. Toad’s eyes stared to the left; his mouth gaped open, as if he were still surprised to be dead.

Johnson had never seen a dead man before, and felt odd as he closed Toad’s eyes and turned away. He was not sad so much as he felt that he was not here in this desolate Western place, that he was not alone with some Indian scout, that he was not in mortal danger. His mind simply refused to accept it. He sought something to do, and said, “Well, we better bury him.”

“No!” Little Wind seemed horrified.

“Why not?”

“Sioux find him.”

“Not if we bury him, Little Wind.”

“Sioux find place, they dig him, take scalp, take fingers. Women come, take more.” He pointed to his crotch.

Johnson shivered. “Where are the Sioux now?”

Little Wind pointed to the plains above the cliffs.

“They leave, or they stay?”

“They stay. They come in morning. Maybe bring more warriors.”

Weariness overcame Johnson, and his leg throbbed. “We’ll leave as soon as it’s light.”

“No. Leave now.”

Johnson looked up. The clouds were heavier, and there was a faint blue ring circling the moon.

“It’ll be pitch-dark in a few minutes. There won’t even be starlight.”

“Must leave,” insisted Little Wind.

“It’s a miracle we’ve survived this far, but we can’t go on through the badlands in darkness.”

“Leave now,” Little Wind said.

“But we’ll die.”

“We die anyway. Leave now.”

They moved through utter blackness.

Johnson drove the wagon, with Little Wind walking a few paces ahead. Little Wind carried a long stick and a handful of rocks. When he could not see the terrain ahead, he threw rocks.

Sometimes, it took a long time for the rocks to land, and when the sound came back, it was distant and hollow and echoing. Then Little Wind would edge forward, tapping the ground with the stick like a blind man until he found the edge of the precipice. He would then point the wagon in a different direction.

Their progress was exhausting, and painfully slow. Johnson could not believe they were making more than a few hundred yards in an hour’s time; it seemed pointless. At dawn, the Indians would charge down the ravines, pick up their trail, and find them in a matter of minutes.

“What is the point?” he would demand when the throbbing in his leg became especially bad.

“Look at sky,” Little Wind would say.

“I see the sky. It’s black. The sky is black.”

Little Wind said nothing.

“What about the damned sky?” he demanded.

But Little Wind explained no further.

Shortly before dawn, it began to snow.

They had reached Bear Creek, at the edge of the badlands, and they paused to water the team.

“Snow good,” Little Wind said. “Unkpapa warriors see snow, know they follow us easy. They wait, stay warm by fire one, two hours in morning.”

“And meanwhile, we go like hell.”

Little Wind nodded. “Go like hell.”

From Bear Creek they headed west across open prairie, as fast as they could with the horses. The wagon jolted over the prairie; the pain in his leg was severe.

“Where are we going, Fort Benton?”

Little Wind shook his head. “All white men go to Fort Benton.”

“You mean the Sioux expect us to go there?”

He nodded.

“Then where are we going?”

“Sacred Mountains.”

“What sacred mountains?” Johnson asked, alarmed.

“Thunder Mountains of Great Spirit.”

“Why are we going there?”

Little Wind did not answer.

“How far away are these sacred mountains? What will we do when we get there?”

“Four days. You wait,” Little Wind said. “You find many white men.”

“But why are you going there?”

Johnson noticed now that Little Wind’s buckskin shirt was seeping red, staining with blood.

“Little Wind, are you hurt?”

In a high falsetto voice, Little Wind began to chant a song. He did not speak again.

They turned south, across the plains.

Little Wind died silently on the third night. Johnson awoke at dawn to find him lying stiffly by the smoldering campfire, his face covered with snow, his skin cold to the touch.

Using his rifle for support, Johnson dragged Little Wind’s body to the wagon, painfully hoisted it up into the bed, next to Toad’s, and drove on. He was feverish, hungry, and often delirious. He was sure he was lost, but he did not care. He began to remind himself to keep sitting up, even as his mind separated itself from his ordeal, creating distracting and confusing visions. At one point he believed that the wagon was approaching Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, and that he was searching unsuccessfully for his family’s mansion.

Early in the fourth day, he found a clear wagon track, freshly used. The track wound eastward, toward a range of low purple hills.

He went into the hills. As he continued on, he found places where timber had been cut and initials had been carved in trees—evidence of white men. It was very cold and the snow was falling heavily when he climbed a final ridge and saw a town in the gulley below—a single muddy street of square, utilitarian wooden buildings. He whipped up the horses and rode down to it.

And that was how, on August 31, 1876, William Johnson, nearly fainting from hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and blood loss, rode with a wagonload of bones, and the dead bodies of a white man and a Snake scout, into the town of Deadwood Gulch.

Deadwood

Deadwood presented a bleak aspect: a single street of unpainted wooden buildings surrounded by bare hills—the trees had been cut down to provide lumber for the town. Everything was covered in a thin crust of dirty snow. But despite the dreary appearance, the town had the charged excitement of a boomtown. The main street of Deadwood consisted of the usual mining-town variety—a tin shop, a carpenter shop, three dry goods stores, four stables, six grocery stores, a Chinatown with four Chinese laundries, and seventy-five saloons. And in the center of it all, boasting a wooden second-story balcony, stood the Grand Central Hotel.

Johnson staggered up the front steps, and the next thing he knew he was lying on a padded bench inside the hotel, attended to by the proprietor, an older man with thick glasses and thinning greased hair.

“Young fellow,” he joked, “I seen men in worse shape, but a percentage of them was dead.”

“Food?” Johnson croaked.

“We got plenty of food here. I’m going to help you into the dining room and we’ll get some vittles into you. You got any money?”

An hour later, he was feeling distinctly better and looked up from his plate. “That was good. What was it?”

The woman clearing the table said, “That’s buffalo tongue.”

The proprietor, who was named Sam Perkins, looked in. Considering the rough surroundings, he was extremely polite. “I’m thinking you need a room, young man.”

Johnson nodded.

“Four dollars, payable in advance. And a bath can be obtained down the street at the Deadwood public baths.”

“Much obliged,” Johnson said.

“That pretty slash on your face is going to heal by itself, leave a scar, but that leg needs attention.”

“I am in agreement,” said Johnson wearily.

Perkins asked where Johnson had come from. He said he had come from the badlands of Montana near Fort Benton. Perkins looked at him in disbelief, but said only that it was a long way to come.

Johnson stood up and asked if there was someplace he could store the crates on his wagon. Perkins said he had a room in the back, available to hotel guests, and that only he had the key to the lock on its door. “What do you have to store?”

“Bones,” Johnson said, realizing the warm food had given him some strength.

“You mean, animal bones?”

“That’s right.”

“You making soup?”

Johnson didn’t appreciate the joke. “These are valuable to me.”

Perkins said he didn’t think that anyone in Deadwood would be interested in stealing his bones.

Johnson said he had gone through hell and back for these bones, and he had two dead bodies in his wagon to prove it, and he wasn’t taking any chances. Could he please store his bones in the storeroom?

“How much space you need? It ain’t a barn.”

“I got ten wood boxes of bones and then some other supplies.”

“Well, let’s see them.”

Perkins followed Johnson back out onto the street, looked in the wagon, and nodded. While Johnson started moving crates, Perkins inspected the snow-covered bodies. He brushed the snow away.

“This one’s an Indian.”

“That’s right.”

Perkins squinted at Johnson. “How long you had these two with you?”

“One’s been dead almost a week. The Indian died yesterday.”

Perkins scratched his chin. He asked, “You thinking of burying your friend?”

“Now I’ve got him away from the Sioux, I guess I will.”

“There’s a graveyard at the north end of town. What about the Indian?”

“I’ll bury him, too.”

“Not in the graveyard.”

“He’s a Snake.”

“Good for him,” Perkins said. “We don’t have no problem with Snakes that is alive, but you can’t bury any Indian in the graveyard.”

“Why not?”

“Town won’t stand for it.”

Johnson glanced at the unpainted wood buildings. The town didn’t seem to have been there long enough to have formed a civic opinion on any subject, but he simply asked why not.

“He’s a heathen.”

“He’s a Snake, and I didn’t bury him for the same reason I didn’t bury the white man. If the Sioux found the grave, they’d dig him up and mutilate him. This Indian led me to safety. I owe him a decent burial.”

“That’s fine, you do what you want with him,” Perkins said, “long as you don’t bury him in the graveyard. You don’t want to cause trouble. Not in Deadwood.”

Johnson was too tired to argue. He carried the crates of fossils inside, stacking them to take up as little space as possible, and made sure Perkins locked the room after he exited. Then he asked the proprietor to arrange for his bath, and went off to bury the bodies.

It took a long time to dig the hole for Toad in the graveyard at the end of town. He had to use a pick before shoveling out the rocky earth. He dragged Toad out of the wagon and into the grave, which didn’t look comfortable, even for a dead man. “I’m sorry, Toad,” he said aloud. “I’ll tell your family when I get the chance.”

When the first shovel of earth landed on Toad’s face, Johnson stopped. I’m not who I used to be, he thought. Then he finished filling in the grave.

He took Little Wind’s body outside the town, along a side road, and dug a grave beneath a spreading fir tree on the slope of a hill. The ground was easier to dig in this location, which made him think the town should have located the graveyard there instead. The hill faced north, and from the site you could not see any sign of habitation or white men.

Then he sat down and cried until he was too cold to stay out anymore. He returned to town, had his bath, carefully cleaning and bandaging his wounded leg. Then he pulled on his dirty, blood-crusted clothes again.

In his hotel room, there was a small mirror above the washbasin, and he inspected the slash above his lip for the first time. The edges of the wound had started to heal but hadn’t closed up. There would be quite a scar.

The bed was a thin straw mattress over a simple lumber frame.

He slept for thirty hours, straight through.

From Johnson’s journal:

When I went down to eat in the hotel dining room, two days later, I discovered that I had become the most famous person in Deadwood. Over antelope steaks, the five other hotel guests—all rough miners—plied me with bourbon and questions about my recent activities. Like the proprietor, Mr. Perkins, they were exceedingly polite in their manner, and everyone kept their hands on the table when they ate. But I noticed, polite or not, that they did not believe my story.

It took some time to learn why. Apparently anyone who claimed to have crossed from Montana into Dakota was on the face of it a liar, since anyone who tried it would be certain to die at the hands of the Sioux. But the fact was I had encountered no Indians at all since the attack on the wagon; Sitting Bull’s Sioux must have been to the north of us when we had made our crossing.

But in Deadwood, the story was not believed, and this drew attention on my “bones,” which I had stored. One interested guest was a hard customer called Broken Nose Jack McCall, whose moniker was likely the result of a barroom altercation. Broken Nose also had one eye that looked steadfastly to the left, with a pale blue cast to it, like a bird of prey. Whether because of this eye, or some other reason, he was very mean, but not so mean as his companion, Black Dick Curry, who had a snake tattoo on his left wrist and the unlikely nickname “the Miner’s Friend.” When I asked Perkins why he was called the Miner’s Friend, the proprietor said it was a kind of joke.

“What do you mean, a joke?” I asked.

“We can’t get proof of it, but most folks reckon Dick Curry and his brothers, Clem and Bill, are the highwaymen who rob the stagecoaches and gold shipments going from Deadwood down to Laramie and Cheyenne,” Perkins explained.

“We’re near Cheyenne?” I asked, suddenly excited. For the hundredth time I cursed my lack of geographical knowledge.

“Near to there as anywhere,” the proprietor said.

“I want to go there,” I said.

“Nobody keeping you here, is there?”

In high excitement, thinking of Lucienne, he returned to his room to pack. But after he unlocked the door, he discovered the room had been searched, and his personal articles scattered around. His wallet was missing; all his money was gone.

He went downstairs to Perkins, at the desk.

“I’ve been robbed.”

“How can that be?” Perkins said, and accompanied him upstairs. Perkins viewed the room with equanimity. “Just one of the boys, burdened with curiosity, checking out your story. They didn’t take anything, did they?”

“Yes, they took my wallet.”

“How can that be?” Perkins said.

“It was here, in my room.”

“You left your wallet in your room?”

“I was only going downstairs to dinner.”

“Mr. Johnson,” Perkins said gravely, “you’re in Deadwood. You can’t leave your money unattended for a breath.”

“Well, I did.”

“That is a problem,” Perkins said.

“You better call the town marshal and report the robbery.”

“Mr. Johnson, there’s no marshal in Deadwood.”

“No marshal?”

“Mr. Johnson, there was no town here this time last year. We surely haven’t gotten around to hiring a marshal. Besides, I don’t think the boys’d stand for one. They’d kill him first thing. Just two weeks back, Bill Hickok was killed here.”

“Wild Bill Hickok?”

“That’s him.” Perkins explained that Hickok was playing cards in Nuttal and Mann’s Saloon when Jack McCall came in and shot him through the back of the head. The bullet passed through Hickok’s head and lodged in the wrist of another player. Hickok was dead before his hands touched his guns.

“The Jack McCall I had dinner with?”

“That’s him. Most folks figure Jack was hired to shoot Wild Bill by folks who were afraid he’d be hired as town marshal. Now I reckon nobody’s eager for the job.”

“Then who keeps the law here?”

“There is no law here,” Perkins said. “This is Deadwood.” He was speaking slowly, as if to a stupid child. “Judge Harlan presides over the inquests, when he’s sober enough, but other’n that, there’s no law at all, and people like it that way. Hell, every saloon in Deadwood is technically against the law; this is Indian territory, and you can’t sell spirits in Indian territory.”

“All right,” Johnson said. “Where is the telegraph office? I’ll wire my father for funds, pay you, and be gone.”

Perkins shook his head.

“No telegraph office?”

“Not in Deadwood, Mr. Johnson. Not yet, anyway.”

“What do I do about my stolen money?”

“That is a problem,” Perkins agreed. “You been here three days now, you owe six dollars plus your dinner tonight, that’s a dollar more. And you stabled your horses with Colonel Ramsay?”

“Yes, down the street.”

“Well, he’s going to want two dollars a day, so that makes six or eight dollars more you owe him. I reckon you can sell him your wagon and team to square it.”

“If I sell my wagon and team, how can I leave with my bones?”

“That is a problem,” Perkins said. “It surely is.”

“I know it is a problem!” Johnson began to shout.

“Now, Mr. Johnson, keep a cool head,” Perkins said soothingly. “You still intending to go to Laramie and Cheyenne?”

“That’s right.”

“Then that wagon is no good to you, anyhow.”

“Why not?”

“Mr. Johnson, why don’t you come downstairs and allow me to pour you a drink? I suspect there’s one or two facts that ought to make your acquaintance.”

The facts were these:

There were two roads to Deadwood, north and south.

Johnson had driven into Deadwood unmolested only because he had arrived from the north. Nobody was ever expected from the north; the route was bad and there were hostile Indians in the north, and consequently the road was unattended by brigands and highwaymen.

On the other hand, the road to Laramie and Cheyenne ran south. And that road was thick with thieves. They sometimes preyed on emigrants coming up to seek their fortune, but they especially preyed on anything moving south out of Deadwood.

In addition, there were marauding bands of Indians, assisted by white bandits, such as the notorious “Persimmons Bill,” who was said to have led the savages responsible for the massacre of the entire Metz party in Red Canyon earlier that year.

The stagecoach line had started up that spring with a single armed guard, or messenger, riding shotgun up with the driver. Pretty soon they laid on two messengers, then three. Lately there were never less than four. And when the Gold Stage went south once a week, it traveled in a convoy with a dozen heavily armed guards.

Even then, they didn’t always make it through. Sometimes, they were driven back to Deadwood, and sometimes they were killed and the gold stolen.

“You mean the guards were killed?”

“Guards and passengers both,” Perkins said. “These highwaymen just naturally kill anyone they come across. It’s their way of doing business.”

“That’s appalling!”

“Yep. It’s bad, too.”

“How am I going to leave?”

“Well, this is what I’ve been trying to explain,” Perkins said patiently. “It’s a good deal easier to come to Deadwood than to leave.”

“What can I do?”

“Well, come spring, things should cool down a bit. They say Wells Fargo will start a coach line, and they have experience cleaning up desperadoes. You’ll be safe then.”

“In the spring? But this is September.”

“I believe so,” Perkins said.

“You’re trying to tell me I’m stuck here in Deadwood until spring?”

“I believe so,” Perkins said, pouring him another drink.

Life in Deadwood

There was a good deal of gunfire during the late hours, and Johnson spent a restless night. He awoke with an aching head; Perkins gave him strong black coffee, and he went out to see what he could do to raise funds.

The snow had melted during the night; the street was now ankle deep with stinking mud, the wooden buildings streaked with damp. Deadwood looked especially dreary, and the prospect of remaining there for six or seven months depressed him. Nor were his spirits improved when he saw a dead man lying on his back in the muddy street. Flies buzzed around the body; three or four loungers stood over it, smoking cigars and discussing its former owner, but no one made any attempt to move the corpse, and the passing teams of horses just wheeled past it.

Johnson stopped. “What happened?”

“That’s Willy Jackson. He was in a fracas last night.”

“A fracas?”

“I believe he engaged in disputing with Black Dick Curry, and they settled it outside in the street.”

Another man said, “Willy always did drink overmuch.”

“You mean Dick shot him?”

“Ain’t the first time. Dick likes to kill. Does it when he can.”

“You just going to leave him there?”

“I don’t know who’ll move him,” one said.

“Well, he’s got no relatives to fret over him. He had a brother, but he died of dysentery about two months back. They had a small claim couple of miles east of here.”

“Whatever happened to that claim?” one man asked, flicking his cigar.

“I don’t believe it amounted to nothing.”

“Never did have luck.”

“No, Willy never did.”

Johnson said, “So the body will just stay here?”

One man jerked a thumb to the store behind them. The sign read kim sing washing and ironing. “Well, he’s in front of Sing’s place, I reckon Sing’ll move him before he gets too ripe and ruins business.”

“Sing’s son’ll move him.”

“Too heavy for the son, I imagine. He’s only about eleven.”

“Naw, that little ’un is strong.”

“Not that strong.”

“He moved old Jake when the carriage ran him down.”

“That’s so, he did move Jake.”

They were still discussing it when Johnson walked on.

At Colonel Ramsay’s stables, he offered his wagon and team for sale. Cope had purchased them in Fort Benton for the inflated price of $180; Johnson thought he could get forty or perhaps fifty dollars.

Colonel Ramsay offered ten.

After a long complaint, Johnson agreed to it. Ramsay then explained Johnson owed six already, and plunked down the difference—four silver dollars—on the countertop.

“This is an outrage,” Johnson said.

Silently, Ramsay picked one of the four dollars off the counter.

“What’s that for?”

“That’s for insulting me,” Ramsay said. “Care to do it again?”

Colonel Ramsay was a hard-bitten man well over six feet tall. He wore a long-barreled Colt six-shooter on each hip.

Johnson took the remaining three dollars, and turned to leave.

“You got a mouth, you little bastard,” Ramsay said. “I was you, I’d learn to keep it shut.”

“I appreciate the advice,” Johnson said quietly. He was beginning to understand why everyone in Deadwood was so polite, so almost preternaturally calm.

He next went to the Black Hills Overland and Mail Express, at the north end of the street. The agent there informed him that the fare to Cheyenne was eight dollars by regular coach, and thirty dollars by the express coach.

“Why does the express cost so much more?”

“Your express coach is pulled by a team of six. Standard coach is pulled by a team of two, and it’s slower.”

“That’s the only difference?”

“Well, of late the slow coach hasn’t been making it through regular.”

“Oh.”

Johnson then explained that he had some freight to transport as well. The agent nodded. “Most folks do. If it’s gold, it’s one and a half percent of appraised value.”

“It’s not gold.”

“Well then, it goes at freight rate, five cents a pound. How much you got?”

“About a thousand pounds.”

“A thousand pounds! What on earth you got weighs a thousand pounds?”

“Bones,” Johnson said.

“That’s highly unusual,” the agent said. “I don’t know as we could accommodate you.” He scratched figures on a sheet of paper. “These, ah, bones can ride up top?”

“I guess they can, if they’re safe up there.”

At five cents per pound, Johnson figured, the cost would be fifty dollars.

“Be eighty dollars, plus five dollars loading fee.”

More than he expected. “Oh, fifty for the freight and thirty for the express. Eight-five in all?”

The clerk nodded. “You want to book passage?”

“Not right now.”

“You know where to find us if you do,” he said, and turned away.

As Johnson was leaving, he paused at the door. “About the express coach,” he said.

“Yes?”

“How often does it get through?”

“Well, it gets through mostly,” the agent said. “It’s your best bet, no question of that.”

“But how often?”

The agent shrugged. “I’d say three out of five get through. A few of them get ventilated on the way, but mostly they’re fine.”

“Thank you,” Johnson said.

“Don’t mention it,” the agent said. “You sure you don’t got gold nuggets in them boxes?”

The agent wasn’t the only one who had heard about the boxes of bones. All of Deadwood had, and there was plenty of speculation. It was known, for example, that Johnson had arrived in Deadwood with a dead Indian. Since Indians knew better than any white man where the gold was in their sacred Black Hills, many people figured the Indian had shown Johnson the gold, and then Johnson had killed him and his own partner and made off with the ore, now disguised as crates of “bones.”

Others were equally sure the crates didn’t contain gold, since Johnson hadn’t taken it across the street to the assayer, which was the only sensible thing to do with gold. But the crates might still be plenty valuable, containing jewels or even cash money.

But in that case, why didn’t he take them to the Deadwood bank? Here, the only possible explanation was that the crates contained some recognizable stolen treasure that would be identified at once by the bankers. What that treasure might be was hard to say, but everybody talked about it a great deal.

“I think you might want to move those bones,” said Sam Perkins. “People are talking. I can’t guarantee they won’t get stolen from the storeroom.”

“Can I carry them up to my own room?”

“Nobody will help you, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I wasn’t asking that.”

“Suit yourself. You want to sleep in the same room with a lot of animal bones, nobody will say nothing.”

So that is what he did. Ten boxes, up the stairs, stacked carefully against the wall, more or less blocking all the light from his one window.

“Course everybody knows you moved them upstairs,” said Perkins, tagging along. “That makes them look even more valuable.”

“I thought of that.”

“The posts in that wall are good, but anybody could bust open that door.”

“I could build a thick timber slide lock on the inside, same as a stable door.”

Perkins nodded. “That keeps those boxes safe when you are in the room, but what about when you ain’t?”

“Cut two holes around the post, one in the wall and one in the door, use a chain with a padlock.”

“You got a good padlock?”

“Nope.”

“I do, but you got to buy it from me. Ten dollars. Came off a Sioux City and Pacific boxcar door that caught fire. Heavier than it looks.”

“I would be much obliged.”

“You would be further obliged, financially speaking.”

“Yes.”

“So I expect you’ll have to get a job,” Perkins said. “You need to raise over a hundred dollars, plus what you owe me. That’s a good deal of money to come by honestly.”

Johnson didn’t need to be told that.

“Any work you can do, useful work?”

“I dug all summer.”

“Everybody here can dig. That’s the only reason folks come to the Black Hills—to mine. No, I mean can you cook or shoe horses or do carpentry, anything like that. A skill.”

“No. I am a student.” Johnson looked at the crates of fossils. He rested his hand on one, touched it. He could leave the fossils here. He could take the stage from Deadwood to Fort Laramie, and from there cable home for money. He could tell Cope—assuming Cope was still alive—that the fossils had been lost. A story formed in his mind: they had been ambushed, the wagon had overturned, fallen over a cliff, all the fossils were lost or smashed. It was a pity, but it couldn’t be helped.

Anyway, he thought, these fossils weren’t so important, for the entire American West was full of fossils. Wherever you dug into a cliff, you found old bones of one sort or another. There were certainly far more fossils than gold in this wilderness. These few wouldn’t be missed. At the rate Cope and Marsh were collecting bones, in a year or two these would hardly even be remembered.

Another idea came to him: leave the fossils here in Deadwood, go to Laramie, wire for money, and with proper funds return to Deadwood, collect the fossils, and leave again.

But he knew that if he ever got out of Deadwood alive, he’d never come back. Not for anything. He must either take them now, or turn tail and run without them.

“Dragon teeth,” he said softly, touching the crate, remembering the moment of their discovery.

“What’s that?” said Perkins.

“Nothing,” Johnson said. Try as he might, he could not diminish the importance of the fossils in his mind. It was not merely that he had dug them with his own hands, his own sweat. It was not merely that men had died, that his friends and companions had died, in the course of finding them. It was because of what Cope had said.

These fossils were the remains of the largest creatures that ever walked on the face of the earth—creatures unsuspected by science, unknown to mankind, until their little party had dug them up in the middle of the Montana badlands.

“With all my heart,” he wrote in his journal,

I wish to leave these accursed rocks right here in this accursed town right here in this accursed wilderness. With all my heart, I wish to leave them and go home to Philadelphia and never think again in my life of Cope or Marsh or rock strata or dinosaur genera or any other of this exhausting and tedious business. And to my horror, I find I cannot. I must take them back with me, or stay with them as a mother hen stays with her eggs. Damn all principles.

While Johnson was examining the fossils, Perkins pointed to a jumble of material under a tarp. “This yours, too? What’s all this?”

“That’s photographic equipment,” Johnson said absently.

“Know how to use it?”

“Sure.”

“Well then, your troubles are over!”

“How’s that?”

“We had a man who made photographic pictures. He took his camera out on the road south out of town last spring. Just him and a horse, to take photos of the land. Why, I do not know. Ain’t nothing there. The next stagecoach found him on his back, with the turkey vultures on him. That camera was in a thousand pieces.”

“What happened to all his plates and chemicals?”

“We still got them, but nobody knows what to do with them.”

The Black Hills Art Gallery

“How quickly can one’s disadvantages be turned to profit!” Johnson wrote in his journal.

With the opening of my studio, the Black Hills Art Gallery, my every character flaw is perceived in a new light. Before, my Eastern habits were seen as lacking masculinity; now they are proof of artistry. Before, my disinterest in mining was viewed with suspicion; now, with relief. Before, I had nothing that anyone wanted; now, I can provide what everyone will pay dearly to possess—a portrait.

Johnson rented a location in the south bend of Deadwood, because the light was stronger there for more of the day; the Black Hills Art Gallery was located behind Kim Sing’s laundry, and business was brisk.

Johnson charged two dollars for a portrait and later, as demand increased, raised his prices to three. He could never get used to the demand: “In this rude and bleak setting, hard men want nothing more than to sit as like death, and walk away with their likeness.”

The life of a miner was backbreaking and exhausting; all these men had come a long and dangerous way to seek their fortune in the rugged wilderness, and it was clear that few would succeed. Photographs provided a tangible reality to men who were far from home, fearful and tired; they were posed proofs of success, souvenirs to send to sweethearts and loved ones, or simply ways of remembering, of grasping a moment in a swiftly changing and uncertain world.

His business was not limited to portraits. When the weather was bright, he made excursions to placer mines outside town, to photograph men working at their claims; for this he charged ten dollars.

Meanwhile, most of the businesses in town hired him to portray their establishments. There were moments of minor triumph: on September 4, he tersely records:

Photograph of Colonel Ramsay Stablery. Charged $25 because of “large plate required.” He hated to pay! F11, at 22 sec., dull day.

And he was apparently pleased to become a full citizen of the town. As the days passed, “Foggy” Johnson (a contraction of “photographer”?) became a familiar figure in Deadwood, known to everyone.

He also acquired the frustrations of commercial photographers everywhere. On September 9:

Broken Nose Jack McCall, a notorious gunman, returned to complain of his portrait made yesterday. He showed it to his inamorata, Sarah, who said it did not flatter him, so he was back to demand a more sympathetic version. Mr. McCall has a face like a hatchet, a sneer that would kill a cow from fright, a pox-scarred complexion, and a wall-eye. I told him politely that I had done the best I could, considering.

He discharged his pistols in the Art Gallery, until I offered to try again at no charge.

He sat once more, and he wanted a different pose, with his chin resting on his hand. But the effect of his pose was to portray him as a pensive, effeminate scholar. It was wholly unsuited to his station in life, but he would hear no disagreement about the pose. Upon my retiring to the darkroom, Broken Nose waited outside, allowing me to hear the clicking of his pistol chambers as he reloaded his revolver, in anticipation of my latest effort. Such is the nature of art critics in Deadwood, and under such circumstances, my work surpassed my own expectations, although I lost a deal of sweat before Broken Nose and Sarah pronounced themselves satisfied.

Apparently Johnson knew the rudiments of retouching photographs; by the judicious use of pencils, it was possible to soften signs of scarring and to make other adjustments.

Not everyone wanted his picture taken.

On September 12, Johnson was hired to photograph the interior of the Deadwood Melodeon Saloon, a drinking and gambling establishment at the south end of the main street. Interiors were dark, and he often had to wait several days for strong light to carry out a commission. But a few days later the weather was sunny, and he arrived at two o’clock in the afternoon with his equipment and set up to make an exposure.

The Melodeon Saloon was a dingy place, with a long bar on the back wall and three or four rough tables for playing cards. Johnson went around throwing back the curtains on the windows, flooding it with light. The patrons groaned and cursed. The proprietor, Leander Samuels, cried out, “Now, gents, be easy!”

Johnson ducked under the cloth of his camera to compose the shot, and a voice said, “What the hell you doing, Foggy?”

“Taking a picture,” Johnson said.

“Like hell.”

Johnson looked up. Black Dick, the Miner’s Friend, had risen from one of the card tables. His hand rested on his gun.

“Now, Dick,” said Mr. Samuels, “it’s just a picture.”

“It’s disturbing my peace.”

“Now, Dick—” Mr. Samuels began.

“I’ve said my say,” Dick threatened. “I’m playing cards now and I don’t want no picture.”

“Perhaps you’d like to step outside while the picture is made,” Johnson said.

“Perhaps you’d like to step outside with me,” Dick said.

“No thank you, sir,” Johnson said.

“Then you just take yourself and your contraption out, and don’t come back.”

“Now, Dick, I hired Foggy. I want a picture for the wall behind the bar, I think it’d look fine.”

“That’s all right,” Dick said. “He can come back any time he likes, long as I’m not here. No one takes my likeness.” He poked a finger at Johnson, showing off the snake tattoo on his wrist, which he was vain about. “Now you remember that. And you git out.”

Johnson got out.

That was the first sure indication that Black Dick was a wanted man somewhere or other. Nobody in Deadwood was surprised to hear it, and the mystery it added to Dick only increased his reputation.

But it was also the beginning of trouble between Johnson and the three Curry brothers—Dick, Clem, and Bill—that would later cause him so much misery.

But while his business prospered, he didn’t have much time to amass his profits. On September 13 he wrote:

I am generally informed that the mountain roads close with snow by Thanksgiving latest, and perhaps by November first. I must be ready to make my departure before the end of October, or remain until the following spring. Each day I record my accounts and my costs. For the life of me, I do not see how I can possibly make enough money in time to leave.

His journal for the next few days was filled with despairing comments, but two days after that, Johnson’s fortunes again underwent a dazzling change.

“My prayers are answered!” he wrote. “The army has come to town!”

The Army Arrives

On September 14, 1876, two thousand miners lined the streets of Deadwood, firing pistols into the air and shouting their welcome as General George Crook and his column of the 2nd Cavalry rode through the town. “It would be hard to imagine a more popular sight to the locals,” wrote Johnson, “for everyone here fears Indians, and General Crook has waged a successful war against them since spring.”

The arriving army presented a notably rugged appearance after their months on the plains. When General Crook signed into the Grand Central Hotel, Perkins, in his polite way, suggested that the general might wish to visit the Deadwood baths, and perhaps also to obtain a set of new clothing from a dry goods store. General Crook took the hint, and was cleaned up when he stepped onto the Grand Central balcony and made a brief speech to the throng of miners below.

Johnson viewed the festivities, which ran long into the night, with an entirely different perspective. “Here at last,” he wrote, “is my ticket to civilization!”

Johnson asked Crook’s quartermaster, Lieutenant Clark, about joining the cavalry for the march south. Clark said that would be fine, but he would have to square it with the general himself. Wondering how to meet the man, Johnson thought perhaps he should offer to take his picture.

“General hates pictures,” Clark advised him. “Don’t do it. Go up directly and just ask him.”

“Very well,” Johnson said.

“One other thing,” Clark said. “Don’t shake hands. General hates to shake hands.”

“Very well,” Johnson said.

Major General George Crook was every inch a military man: short-cropped hair; piercing eyes; a full, flowing beard; and ramrod-erect posture as he sat in his chair in the dining room. Johnson waited until the man had finished his coffee and some of his admirers had departed for the gambling halls before he approached and explained his situation.

Crook listened patiently to Johnson’s tale, but before long he was shaking his head, murmuring that he could not take civilians on a military expedition with all the hazards involved—he was sorry, but it was impossible. Then Johnson mentioned the fossil bones he wished to take home.

“Fossil bones?”

“Yes, General.”

Crook said, “You have been digging fossil bones?”

“Yes, General.”

“And you are from Yale?”

“Yes, General.”

His whole manner changed. “Then you must be associated with Professor Marsh of Yale,” he said.

After the briefest hesitation, Johnson said that he was indeed associated with Professor Marsh.

“Marvelous man. Charming, intelligent man,” Crook said. “I met him in Wyoming in ’72, we went hunting together. Outstanding man. Remarkable man.”

“None quite like him,” Johnson agreed.

“You’re with his party?”

“I was. I became separated from it.”

“Damned bad luck,” Crook said. “Well, anything I can do for Marsh, I will. You are welcome to join my column, and we will see your fossil bones safely to Cheyenne.”

“Thank you, General!”

“Have your bones loaded on a suitable wagon. Quartermaster Clark will assist you in any way you need. We march at dawn, day after tomorrow. Happy to have you with us.”

“Thank you, General!”

Last Day in Deadwood

On September 15, his last full day in Deadwood, Johnson undertook two final photo assignments.

In the morning, he rode out to Negro Gulch to photograph the colored miners who had made a fabulous strike there. Six miners had been taking out nearly two thousand dollars a day for weeks; their ore was shipped home, and they had already sold their claim. Now they were posing, putting on their old work clothes and standing by the flume for the photograph, then dressing again in their new duds and burning the old clothes.

They were in high spirits, and wanted the picture to take to St. Louis. For his part, Johnson was pleased to see miners so well disciplined that they were taking their findings home with them. Most left their earnings in the saloons or on the green felt of the gaming tables, but these men were different. “They are ever so cheerful,” Johnson wrote, no doubt cheerful himself, “and I wish them the best of luck in their journey home.”

In the afternoon, he photographed the facade of the Grand Central Hotel for its owner, Sam Perkins. “You photographed everyone else,” Perkins said, “and since you’re leaving town, it’s the least you can do.”

Johnson was obliged to set up his camera across the street. Had he set up closer, the passing horses and carriages would have kicked mud in the lens. The intervening street traffic would appear to obstruct the view of the hotel, but Johnson knew that moving objects—horses and wagons—would not leave more than a ghostly streak in a time exposure; for all intents and purposes, the hotel would appear to stand on an empty street.

Indeed, it was a problem when photographers tried to represent the busy street activity of towns, because the movement of horses and pedestrians and wagons was too quick for the film to record.

Johnson made his usual exposure—F11 and 22 seconds—and then, since the light was especially strong and he had a spare plate that was wet and waiting, he decided to try to capture the street life of Deadwood in a final quick shot. He exposed the last plate at F3.5 and 2 seconds.

Johnson developed both plates in his darkroom at the Black Hills Art Gallery and, while they were drying, purchased a suitable wagon to transport his bones with the cavalry. Then he went to the hotel to load the fossils, and have his final dinner in Deadwood.

He arrived just in time to see a body carried out into the street.

Norman H. “Texas Tom” Walsh had been found strangled in his room on the second floor of the Grand Central Hotel. Texas Tom was a short, feisty man who was rumored to be a member of the Curry gang of stage robbers. Suspicion of murder naturally fell on Black Dick Curry, also staying in the hotel at the time, but no one was brave enough to make an accusation.

For his part, Black Dick claimed to have spent all afternoon in the Melodeon Saloon, and to be innocent of any knowledge of what might have happened to Texas Tom.

And there the matter might have ended, had not Sam Perkins decided to stop by Johnson’s table and ask, during dinner, about the hotel portrait.

“Did you make it today?” Perkins asked.

“I did.”

“And how did it turn out?”

“Very nicely,” Johnson said. “I will have a print for you tomorrow.”

“What time’d you take it?” Perkins asked.

“Must have been about three o’clock in the afternoon.”

“Aren’t there shadows then? I’d hate the place to look all depressing, with shadows.”

“There were some shadows,” Johnson said, but he explained that shadows made a picture look better, giving it more depth and character.

It was then that Johnson noticed that Black Dick was listening to their conversation with interest.

“Where’d you take the picture from?” Perkins asked.

“Across the street.”

“Where, over by Donohue’s store?”

“No, farther south, by Kim Sing’s.”

“What’re you fellers yammering on about?” Black Dick asked.

“Foggy took a portrait picture of the hotel today.”

“Did he.” The voice went cold. “When was that?”

Johnson instantly felt danger in the situation, but Perkins was oblivious to it. “What’d you just say, Foggy, ’bout three o’clock?”

“Something about there,” Johnson said.

Dick cocked his head; he fixed Johnson with a watchful eye. “Foggy, I warned you once about photographin’ when I was around.”

“But you weren’t around, Dick,” Perkins said. “Remember, you told Judge Harlan that you were at the saloon all afternoon.”

“I know what I told Judge Harlan,” Dick growled. He turned slowly to Johnson. “Where’d you take the picture from, Foggy?”

“Across the street.”

“Turn out good?”

“No, as a matter of fact it didn’t turn out at all. I’m going to have to take it again tomorrow.” He kicked Perkins under the table as he said it.

“I thought your pictures always turned out.”

“Not always.”

“Where’s the picture you did today?”

“I scrubbed the glass plate. It wasn’t any good.”

Dick nodded. “All right, then.” And he turned back to his meal.

“You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?” Perkins asked later.

“Yep,” Johnson said.

“Texas Tom had a room right at the front of the hotel, facing out on the street. Middle of the afternoon, sunlight would shine right in. Did you look real close at your picture?”

“No,” Johnson said. “I didn’t.”

At that moment, Judge Harlan came in, puffing. They quickly told him the conversation with Black Dick. “I can’t see as there’s any case against Dick at all,” he said. “I’ve just come from the Melodeon. Everybody swears Dick Curry was playing faro there all afternoon, just like he says.”

“Well, he must have paid them off!”

“There’s twenty or more seen him. I doubt he paid ’em all,” Judge Harlan said. “No, Dick was there all right.”

“Then who killed Texas Tom?”

“I’ll worry over it at the inquest, in the morning,” Judge Harlan said.

Johnson intended to pack after dinner, but curiosity—and Perkins’s urging—led him to the Black Hills Art Gallery instead. “Where are they?” Perkins asked when they had locked the door behind them.

They inspected the two exposed plates.

The first exposure was as Johnson had remembered—a deserted hotel, with no people visible at all.

The second plate showed horses in the streets and people walking through the mud.

“Can you see the window?” Perkins asked.

“Not really,” Johnson said, squinting, holding the plate to a kerosene lantern. “I can’t see.”

“I think there’s something there,” Perkins said. “You have a glass?”

Johnson held a magnifying glass to the plate.

Clearly visible in the second-floor window were two figures. One was being strangled by a second man, who stood behind him.

“I’ll be damned,” Perkins said. “You took a picture of the murder!”

“Can’t see much, though,” Johnson said.

“Make it bigger,” Perkins said.

“I have to pack,” Johnson said. “I’m leaving with the cavalry at dawn.”

“Cavalry’s drunk in the saloons all over town,” Perkins said, “and they’ll never leave at dawn. Make it bigger.”

Johnson had no enlarging equipment, but he managed to rig an impromptu outfit and exposed a print. They both peered into the developing tray as the image slowly appeared.

In the window, Texas Tom struggled, his back arched with effort, his face contorted. Two hands gripped his neck, but the killer’s body was blocked by the curtain to the left, and the killer’s head was in deep shadow.

“Better,” Perkins said. “But we still can’t see who it is.”

They made another print, and then another still larger. The work became slower as the evening progressed. The rigged system was sensitive to vibration at great magnification, and Perkins was so excited he could not stand still during the long exposure.

Shortly before midnight, they got a clear one. At great magnification, the picture was speckled and grainy. But one detail came through. There was a tattoo on the left wrist of the strangling arm: it showed a curled snake.

“We got to tell Judge Harlan,” Perkins insisted.

“I got to pack,” Johnson said, “and I got to get some sleep before I leave tomorrow.”

“But this is murder!”

“This is Deadwood,” Johnson said. “Happens all the time.”

“You’re just going to leave?”

“I am.”

“Then give me the plate, and I’ll go tell Judge Harlan.”

“Suit yourself,” Johnson said, and gave him the plate.

Back in the Grand Central Hotel lobby, he passed Black Dick Curry himself. Dick was drunk.

“Howdy, Foggy,” Dick said.

“Howdy, Dick,” Johnson said, and he went up to his room. It was, he observed in his journal, a fine ironic last touch to his last day in notorious Deadwood.

He had been packing for half an hour when Perkins showed up in his room with Judge Harlan.

“You take this picture?” Judge Harlan said.

“I did, Judge.”

“You doctor this picture in any way, pencil touch-ups or whatever?”

“No, Judge.”

“That’s fine,” Judge Harlan said. “We got him dead to rights.”

“I’m glad for you,” Johnson said.

“Inquest will settle it in the morning,” Judge Harlan said. “Be there at ten o’clock, Foggy.”

Johnson said he was leaving town with General Crook’s cavalry.

“I’m afraid you can’t,” Judge Harlan said. “In fact, you’re at some risk right here tonight. We’re gonna have to take you into protective custody.”

“What’re you talking about?” Johnson asked.

“I’m talking about jail,” Judge Harlan said.

The Next Day in Deadwood

Jail was an abandoned mine shaft at the edge of town. It was fitted with iron bars and a solid lock. After spending a night in the freezing cold, Johnson was able to look through the bars and watch the cavalry under the command of General George Crook ride south out of Deadwood.

He shouted to them—shouted until he was hoarse—but no one paid any attention. No one came to let him out of jail until nearly noon, when Judge Harlan showed up, groaning and shaking his head.

“What’s the trouble?” Johnson said.

“Bit much to drink last night,” the judge said. He held the door wide. “You’re free to go.”

“What about the inquest?”

“Inquest’s been cancelled.”

“What?”

Judge Harlan nodded. “Black Dick Curry hightailed it out of town. Seems he got word of what was coming, and chose the better part of valor, as Shakespeare would say. An inquest’s beside the point, with Dick gone. You’re free to go.”

“But the cavalry’s a half day ahead of me now,” Johnson said. “I can never catch up with them.”

“True,” the judge said. “I’m real sorry for the inconvenience, son. I guess you’ll be staying with us in Deadwood a while longer, after all.”

The story of Johnson’s incriminating photograph, and how he had come to miss leaving with the cavalry, went through the town. It had serious consequences.

The first was to worsen relations between Johnson and Black Dick Curry, the Miner’s Friend. All the Curry brothers now were openly hostile to him, especially as Judge Harlan seemed uninterested in setting another inquest into the death of Texas Tom. When they were in town, which was whenever there was no stage leaving Deadwood for a day or so, they stayed at the Grand Central Hotel. And when they ate, which was seldom, they took their meals there.

Johnson irritated Dick, who announced that Johnson behaved superior to everybody else, with what he called “his Phil-a-del-phia ways. ‘Pass the butter, would you please?’ Faugh! Can’t bear his fairy-airy ways.”

As the days passed, Dick took to bullying Johnson, to the amusement of his brothers. Johnson bore it quietly; there was nothing he could do since Dick was only too ready to take an argument out into the street and settle it with pistols. He was a steady shot, even when drunk, and killed a man every few days.

No one in town who knew Dick would go up against him, and certainly Johnson did not intend to. But it got so bad that he would leave the dining room before finishing his meal if Dick entered.

And then there was the business of Miss Emily.

Emily

Women in Deadwood were few, and no better than they needed to be. Most of them lived in a house called the Cricket, down at the end of the south bend, where they plied their trade under the cold watchful eye of Mrs. Marshall, who smoked opium and owned the house. Others were independent, like Calamity Jane, who in recent weeks had made a great show of mourning the death of Bill Hickok, much to the disgust of Hickok’s friends. Calamity Jane was so masculine she often wore a soldier’s uniform and traveled undetected with the boys in blue, giving them service in the field; she had gone with Custer’s 7th Cavalry on more than one occasion. But she was so male that she often boasted that “give me a dildo in the dark, and no woman can tell me from a true man.” As one observer noted, this left Jane’s appeal somewhat obscure.

A few Deadwood miners had brought their wives and families, but they did not often show in town. Colonel Ramsay had a fat squaw wife named Sen-a-lise; Mr. Samuels had a wife, too, but she was consumptive and always stayed indoors. So for the most part, the feminine element was provided by the Cricket women, and the girls who worked in the saloons. In the words of one Deadwood visitor, they were “pleasant women of a certain age, but in appearance as hard and mean as the rest of the landscape of that wretched mining town. The ones that ran tables in the saloons smoked and swore with the best of the men, and were so full of tricks that seasoned gamblers avoided them, and preferred men as dealers.”

Into this hard-bitten world, Miss Emily Charlotte Williams appeared as a floating vision of loveliness.

She arrived one noon on a miner’s buckboard, dressed entirely in white, her blond hair tied back fetchingly. She was young—though perhaps a few years older than Johnson; she was immaculate; she was delicate and fresh and sweet, and possessed some notable curvatures. When she took a room at the Grand Central Hotel, she became the most interesting new arrival since young Foggy had showed up with a wagonload of mysterious crates and two dead men covered in snow.

News of Miss Emily, her lovely appearance and her tender story, raced around the town. Perkins’s dining room, never before full, was packed that night as everyone came to get a look at the creature.

She was an orphan, the daughter of a preacher, the Reverend Williams, who had been killed in the nearby town of Gayville while building a church. At first it was said that he had been shot by a devilish desperado, but it later turned out he had fallen from the roof under construction and broken his neck.

In her grief, it was also said, Miss Emily had collected her few belongings, and set out to find her brother Tom Williams, whom she knew to be prospecting somewhere in the Black Hills. She had already been to Montana City and Crook City, and had not succeeded in finding him. Now she was in Deadwood, where she planned to stay three or four days, perhaps more.

The men in the Grand Central Hotel that night had bathed, and were wearing the cleanest clothes they owned; Johnson recorded in his journal that “it was amusing, to see these hard men preen and puff up their chests while they tried to eat their soup without slurping.”

But there was a good deal of tension in the room as well, which was increased when Black Dick went over to Miss Emily’s table (the object of all eyes was dining alone) and introduced himself. He offered to escort her around the town that evening; with admirable poise she thanked him but said she would be retiring early. He offered to assist her in finding her brother; she thanked him but said that she had already had many offers of assistance.

Dick was being watched by all the others, and knew it. He sweated; his face turned red and he glowered.

“Seems I can’t be of help to you, then, is that it?”

“I appreciate your courteous offer, I surely do,” she said softly.

Dick appeared somewhat mollified as he stomped back to his table and huddled, commiserating, with his brothers.

And there the matter might have rested, had not Miss Emily turned to Johnson, and said in her sweetest voice, “Oh, are you the young photographer I have heard so much about?”

Johnson said he was.

“I should appreciate seeing your gallery of pictures,” she said. “Perhaps my brother is among them.”

“I will be happy to show them to you in the morning,” Johnson answered, and she responded with a graceful smile.

Black Dick looked fit to kill—Johnson, in particular.

“There is no greater pleasure than to win what everyone desires,” Johnson noted in his pages; he went to bed a happy man. He had become accustomed to sleeping in the room next to the stacked crates, accustomed not only to the fine powder that fell from them and dusted the floor, but also to the tomb-like darkness of the room itself and a strange sense of intimacy to be sleeping with the bones of the great creatures themselves. And of course the immense teeth, the teeth of actual dragons that once walked the earth. He found their presence oddly comforting.

And tomorrow would bring his appointment with Emily.

But his happiness was short-lived. Emily was disappointed by his pictures, not finding her dear brother among them.

“Perhaps you could look again,” he suggested. She had gone through them very quickly.

“No, no, I know he is not to be found in these.” She prowled his shop restlessly, looking around. “Have you shown me all you have?”

“All I have taken in Deadwood, yes.”

She pointed to a corner shelf. “You haven’t shown me those.”

“Those are from my time in the badlands. Your brother is not among those plates, I assure you.”

“But I am interested to see. Bring them here, and come sit beside me, and tell me about the badlands.”

She was so charming he could not possibly refuse her. He brought down the plates and showed her his pictures, which seemed now to belong to another lifetime.

“Who is this man with the tiny pick?”

“That’s Professor Cope, with his geological hammer.”

“And that beside him?”

“That’s a skull of a saber-tooth tiger.”

“And this man?”

“That’s Cookie. Our teamster and cook.”

“And this? Is he standing with an Indian?”

“That’s Charlie Sternberg and Little Wind. He was a Snake scout. He died.”

“Oh dear. And this is the badlands? It looks like the desert.”

“Yes, you can see how eroded it is.”

“How long did you spend there?”

“Six weeks.”

“And why would you go to such a place?”

“Well, where there is erosion, the bones stick out and are easier to uncover.”

“You went there for bones?”

“Yes, of course.”

“How very odd,” she said. “Did bones pay you a lot?”

“No, I paid my own way.”

“You paid your own way?” She pointed to the desolate picture. “To go there?”

“It’s a long story,” he said. “You see, I made a bet at Yale and then I had to go.”

But he could tell she was not listening anymore. She thumbed through the glass plates, holding each to the light, glancing quickly, going on to the next.

“What do you hope to find?” he asked, watching her.

“It is all so strange to me,” she said. “I was merely curious about you. Here, put them back.”

As he replaced them on the shelf, she said, “And did you find bones?”

“Oh yes, lots of them.”

“Where are they now?”

“Half were taken down the Missouri River by steamer. I have the other half.”

“You have them? Where?”

“In the hotel.”

“Can I see these bones?”

Something about her manner made him suspicious. “Why would you want to do that?”

“I am just curious to see them, now that you have mentioned them.”

“Everyone in the town is curious to see them.”

“Of course, if it is too much trouble—”

“Oh no,” Johnson said. “It’s no trouble.”

In his room, he opened one crate for her to see. Some gritty dirt fell to the floor.

“That’s just old rocks!” she said, peering at the pieces of black shale.

“No, no, this is a fossil. Look here,” he said, and he traced the shape of a dinosaur leg. It was a perfect specimen.

“But I thought you had found old bones, not rock.”

“Fossil bones are rock.”

“There’s no need to snip.”

“I’m sorry, Emily. But you see, these things have no value at all in Deadwood. They are bones which have lain in the earth for millions of years and which belonged to creatures long gone. This bone is from the leg of an animal with a horn on its nose, like a rhinoceros, but much larger.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“That seems wonderful, Bill,” she said, having decided to call him by that name. Her gentle enthusiasm touched him. She was the first sympathetic person he had come across in a long time.

“I know,” he said, “but no one believes me. The more I explain them, the more they disbelieve. And eventually they will break in and smash them all, if I don’t get out of Deadwood first.”

And despite himself, tears rolled down one cheek, and he turned away, so that she would not see him cry.

“Why, Bill, what’s the matter?” she said, sitting down close to him on the bed.

“It’s nothing,” he said, wiping his face and turning back. “It is just that—I never asked for this job, I just came west and now I am stuck with these bones and they are my responsibility, and I want to keep them safe so the professor can study them, and people never believe me.”

“I believe you,” she said.

“Then you are the only one in Deadwood who does.”

“Shall I tell you a secret of my own?” she said. “I am not really an orphan.”

He paused, waiting.

“I am from Whitewood, where I have lived since the summer.”

He still said nothing.

She bit her lip. “Dick put me up to it.”

“Put you up to what?” he asked, wondering how she knew Dick.

“He thought you would confide in a lady, and tell me what the crates really contained.”

“So you said you would ask me?” he said, feeling hurt.

She looked down, as if ashamed. “I was curious myself, too.”

“They really contain bones.”

“I see that, now.”

“I don’t want them—I don’t want anything to do with them—but they are my responsibility.”

“I believe you.” She frowned. “Now I must convince Dick. He is a hard man, you know.”

“I know.”

“But I will talk to him,” she said. “I will see you at dinner.”

That night in the Grand Central dining room there were two new visitors. At first glance, they seemed to be twins, so similar was their appearance: they were both tall, lean, wiry men in their twenties, with identical broad mustaches, and identical clean white shirts. They were quiet, self-contained men who emanated a forceful calmness.

“Know who those two are?” Perkins whispered to Johnson, over coffee.

“No.”

“That’s Wyatt Earp and his brother Morgan Earp. Wyatt’s taller.”

At the mention of their names, the two men looked over at Johnson’s table and nodded politely.

“This here’s Foggy Johnson, he’s a photographer from Yale College,” Perkins said.

“Howdy,” the Earp brothers said, and went back to their dinner.

Johnson didn’t recognize the names, but Perkins’s manner suggested that they were important and famous men. Johnson whispered, “Who are they?”

“They’re from Kansas,” Perkins said. “Abilene and Dodge City?”

Johnson shook his head.

“They’re famous gunfighters,” Perkins whispered. “Both of ’em.”

Johnson still had no notion of their importance, but any new visitor to Deadwood was fair game for a photograph, and after dinner he suggested it. In his journal, Johnson recorded his first conversation with the famous Earp brothers. It was not exactly a dramatic high point.

“How would you gents like a photograph?” Johnson asked.

“A photograph? Could be,” Wyatt Earp said. Seen close, he was boyish and slender. He had a steady manner, a steady gaze, an almost sleepy calmness. “What’ll it cost?”

“Four bucks,” Johnson said.

The Earp brothers exchanged a silent glance.

“No thanks,” Wyatt Earp said.

Emily’s News

“It’s no good,” she whispered to him outside on the porch of the hotel before dinner. “The Curry boys are rattled by the Earp brothers arriving. It makes them jumpy. So they’re coming for your bones tonight. They boasted about it.”

“They’re not going to get them,” Johnson said.

“I believe they’re in the habit of getting whatever they want.”

“Not this time.”

“What’re you going to do?”

“I’ll stand guard over them,” Johnson said, reaching for his gun.

“I wouldn’t.”

“What do you think I should do?”

“Best thing is step aside, let them have ’em.”

“I can’t do that, Emily.”

“They’re hard men.”

“I know that. But I must guard the bones.”

“They’re just bones.”

“No, they’re not.”

He saw her eyes light up. “They’re valuable, then?”

“They’re priceless. I told you.”

“Tell me really. What are they, really?”

“Emily, they really are bones. Like I told you.”

She looked disgusted. “If it was me, I wouldn’t risk my life for a bunch of old bones.”

“It’s not you, and these bones are important. They are historical bones and important to science.”

“The Curry boys don’t care a hoot for science, and they’d be happy to kill you in the bargain.”

“I know it. But I got to keep the bones.”

“Then you better get help, Bill.”

He found the famous gunfighter Wyatt Earp in the Melodeon Saloon, playing blackjack. Johnson drew him aside.

“Mr. Earp, could I hire your services for the night?”

“I imagine so,” Earp said. “In what capacity?”

“As a guard,” Johnson said, and explained about his fossil bones, the room, and the Curry brothers.

“That’s fine,” Earp said when he had heard it all. “I will want five dollars.”

Johnson agreed.

“In advance.”

Johnson paid him, right there in the saloon. “But I can count on you?”

“You surely can,” Wyatt Earp said. “I will meet you in your room at ten o’clock tonight. Bring ammunition and plenty of whiskey, and don’t worry any further. You have Wyatt Earp on your side now. Your problems are over.”

He had dinner with Emily, in the hotel dining room.

“I wish you would give this up,” she said.

They were exactly his sentiments. But he said, “I can’t, Emily.”

She kissed him lightly on the cheek.

“Then good luck, Bill. I hope I see you tomorrow.”

“Rest assured,” he said, and smiled bravely for her.

She went up to her room. He went to his room and locked himself in.

It was nine o’clock in the evening.

Ten o’clock passed, and ten thirty. He shook his pocket watch, wondering if it was running right. Finally, he unlocked the room, and went down into the hotel lobby.

A pimply boy was behind the desk as night clerk. “Howdy, Mr. Johnson.”

“Howdy, Edwin. You seen Mr. Earp?”

“Not tonight, I haven’t. But I know of his whereabouts.”

“What do you know?”

“He’s at the Melodeon, playing blackjack.”

“He was at the Melodeon this afternoon.”

“Well, he’s still there.”

Johnson looked at the wall clock. It, too, said ten thirty. “He was supposed to meet me here.”

“Probably forgot,” Edwin said.

“We had an arrangement.”

“Probably drinking,” Edwin said.

“Can you go over there and get him for me?”

“I wish I could. But I have to stay here. Don’t worry, Mr. Earp is a responsible sort. If he says he’ll come, I’m sure he’ll be along shortly.”

Johnson nodded and locked himself back in his room.

And waited. If they come in the door, he thought, I better be ready. He put a loaded pistol into each of his boots at the foot of the bed.

The hours dragged by. At midnight, he went out again in his wool socks to ask about Earp, but Edwin was asleep and Earp’s key was on the wall behind him, which meant he had not yet returned from the saloon.

Johnson went back to his room and waited.

All around him, the hotel was silent.

He stared at the hands of his watch. He listened to it tick, and he waited.

At two, there was a scratching on the wall. He jumped up, raising his gun.

He heard the scratching again.

“Who’s there!”

There was no reply. More scratching.

“Get away!” he said, his voice quavering.

He heard a low squeaking, and the scratching moved quickly off. He recognized the sound now.

“Rats.”

He slumped back down, tense and exhausted. He was sweating. His hands were shaking. This was not his line of business. He didn’t have the nerve for it. Where was Wyatt Earp, anyway?

“I can’t figure what you’re so hot about,” Earp said, the next day.

“We had a deal,” Johnson said. “That’s what I’m so hot about.” He had not slept at all the night before; he was angry and tired.

“Yes, we did,” Earp said. “To protect your fossils from the Curry boys.”

“And I paid you in advance.”

“Yes, you did.”

“And where were you?”

“Doing what I was hired to do,” Earp said. “I played blackjack all night. With the Curry boys.”

Johnson sighed. He was too tired to argue.

“Well, what do you expect me to do,” Earp said. “Leave ’em to come and sit in the dark with you?”

“It’s just that I didn’t know.”

“You look peaked,” Earp said sympathetically. “You go get sleep.”

Johnson nodded, started back to the hotel.

“You want to hire me again tonight?” Earp called to him.

“Yes,” Johnson said.

“That’ll be five dollars,” Earp said.

“I’m not paying you five dollars to play blackjack,” Johnson said.

Earp shrugged. “Suit yourself, boy.”

That night he put the loaded pistols and extra bullets in his boots again. He must have fallen asleep after midnight, because he awoke to the sound of wood splintering. The broken door opened, and a figure slid into the room. The door closed again. It was pitch-dark because of the crates blocking the window.

“Foggy,” a voice whispered.

“Wyatt?” Johnson whispered.

The sharp clock of a gun being cocked. A footstep. Silence. Breathing in the dark. Johnson realized he made an easy target and eased out of the bed and beneath it. He took one of the pistols out of its boot and flung the boot against the wall.

At the sound of the boot hitting the wall, there was a tongue of flame as the man fired at the noise. Someone yelled immediately elsewhere in the hotel.

“You get out, whoever you are!” Johnson said, the room filled with smoke now. “I have a loaded gun, you get on out.”

Silence. Another footstep. Breathing.

“That you, Foggy boy?”

The door opened again and another man came in.

“He’s in his bed,” came a voice.

“Foggy, we are going to light a lamp now. Just sit still and we will get this all straightened out.”

Instead, the men opened fire into his bed, splintering the frame. Johnson grabbed his second pistol and lifted both guns, emptying each without skill.

He heard wood splintering, groaning, something falling, then maybe the door being opened.

He paused to reload, fumbling in the darkness. He heard breathing—he was sure of it. That made him nervous. He could imagine the killer squatting there, listening to Johnson’s panicked exhalations, listening to the clink of the bullets going into the chambers, focusing on the sound, locating Johnson . . .

He finished reloading. Still nothing.

“Oh, Carmella,” came a sad and tired voice. “I know I’ve been—” The man’s breathing became labored. “If’n I can just get my breath good . . .” He coughed and there was a kick against the floor. Then a crackling, choking noise. Then nothing.

In his journal, Johnson wrote,

I apprehended then that I had killed a man, but the room was too dark to see who it was. I waited there on the floor with my guns ready in case the other shootist came back, and I resolved to fire first and ask questions afterward. But then I heard Mr. Perkins, the proprietor, calling from the hallway. I answered back. I told him I wasn’t going to shoot, and then he appeared in the doorway with a lamp, throwing light across the room and down to the floor, where a big man lay dead, his blood a wet rug beneath him.

There were three neat bullet wounds in the man’s broad back.

Perkins rolled the body over. In the guttering light of the lamp, he looked into the sightless eyes of Clem Curry. “Dead as a doornail,” he muttered.

The hallway filled with voices, and then heads poked their way through the doorway to gawk.

“Stand back, folks, stand back.”

Judge Harlan pushed roughly through the onlookers into the room. Harlan was in ill humor, probably, Johnson thought, because he had been called out of bed. It turned out to be nothing of the sort. “I left a hell of a poker game,” the judge said, “to deal with this here murder.”

He stared at the body.

“That’s Clem Curry, isn’t it?”

Johnson said it was.

“No loss to the community, as far as I’m concerned,” the judge said. “What was he doing here?”

“Robbing me,” Johnson said.

“Figures,” Judge Harlan said. He took a drink from a hip flask, passed it to Johnson. “Who shot him?”

Johnson said he had.

“Well,” the judge said, “as far as it matters to me, that’s fine. The only trouble is, you shot him in the back.”

Johnson explained that it was dark, and he could not see.

“I am sure of it,” the judge said. “But the problem is, you shot him three times in the back.”

Johnson said he hadn’t intended to kill anyone at all.

“I am sure of it. You have no problem with me, but you may have some difficulty when Black Dick hears of it, tomorrow or the next day, depending if he’s in town.”

This had already occurred to Johnson, and he did not like to think about it too long.

“You planning to leave Deadwood?” the judge said.

“Not just yet,” Johnson said.

Judge Harlan took another pull from the flask. “I would,” he said. “Myself, I’d be gone before daybreak.”

“Well, damn me,” Sam Perkins said, fingering the bullet holes in the wall after the crowd had left. “You surely had some hot work here, Mr. Johnson.”

“They didn’t get the bones.”

“That’s so, but they got every one of my guests out of bed in the middle of the night, Mr. Johnson.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“Scared Edwin the night clerk so bad he wet his trousers. I’m not fooling.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I can’t run a hotel this way, Mr. Johnson. The Grand Central has its reputation. I want these bones out of here today,” Perkins said.

“Mr. Perkins—”

“Today,” Perkins said, “and that’s final. And I’ll charge you to repair the bullet holes. That’ll be on your bill.”

“Where am I going to move them to?”

“Ain’t my problem.”

“Mr. Perkins, these bones are valuable to science.”

“We’re a long way from science. Just get ’em out of here.”

Moving the Bones

With the crates loaded in his wagon the next morning, he went first to the Deadwood bank, but they had no space to store anything but gold dust.

Then he tried Sutter’s Dry Goods. Mr. Sutter had a strong room in the back where he stored his firearms for sale. Mr. Sutter refused outright. But Johnson took the opportunity to buy more bullets for his guns.

The National Hotel was not as particular as the Grand Central, and was known to be accommodating. But the man at the desk said he had no storage facilities.

Fielder’s Saloon and Gaming House was open around the clock, and the scene of so many altercations that Fielder kept an armed guard to maintain order. He had a back room that was large enough.

Fielder said no.

“It’s just bones, Mr. Fielder.”

“Maybe so, maybe not. Whatever it is, the Curry boys are after ’em. I want no part of it.”

Colonel Ramsay was feisty, and had plenty of room in his stables. He just shook his head when Johnson asked him.

“Is everybody afraid of the Curry brothers?”

“Everybody with sense,” Ramsay said.

The afternoon was drawing to an end, the light starting to fail, and the temperature in town was dropping quickly. Johnson went back to his photo studio, the Black Hills Art Gallery, but he had no customers. It seemed he had become extremely unpopular overnight. He was looking around the studio, trying to see whether he could store the bones there, when his landlord, Kim Sing, came in from the laundry with his young son, the one who had dragged away the dead body out of the street.

Sing nodded and smiled, but as usual said nothing. The son said, “You need place to store some things?”

The boy’s English was pretty good. “Yes, I do. What’s your name?”

“Kang.”

“I like your boots there, Kang.”

The boy smiled. Chinese boys never wore leather boots. His father said something to him. “You store your things in Chinese Town.”

“I can?”

“Yes. You can.”

“It would have to be a safe place.”

“Yes. Ling Chow has tool shed, very strong and just new, it has lock and no windows except small windows at the top.”

“Where is it?”

“Behind Ling Chow restaurant.”

In the middle of Chinatown. It would be perfect. Johnson felt a rush of gratitude. “That’s very kind of you, I appreciate your offer very much. No one else in this town will even—”

“Ten dollar a night.”

“What?”

“Ten dollar a night. Okay?”

“I can’t afford ten dollars a night!”

Unblinking: “You can.”

“That’s outrageous.”

“That’s the price. Okay?”

Johnson thought it over. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

“At this time, I still had more than a thousand pounds of fossils,” Johnson later recalled.

Ten boxes weighing about a hundred pounds each. I hired Kim Sing’s boy, Kang, to help me with the wagon. I paid him two dollars for the afternoon, and he earned it. He kept saying, “What is this?” and I kept telling him it was old bones. But my story didn’t get more persuasive. I also didn’t know there were so many Chinamen in Deadwood. It seemed to me their smooth impassive faces were everywhere, watching me, commenting to each other, standing four deep around the tool shed, peering from windows in the surrounding buildings.

Finally when all the crates were stacked neatly in the tool shed, Kang looked at them and said, “Why you care so much?”

I said I didn’t know anymore. Then I went to the Grand Central for dinner, and returned to the tool shed at nightfall, to keep my evening watch over the dinosaur bones.

He did not have long to wait. Around ten, shadowy figures appeared around the high transom windows. Johnson cocked his gun. There were several figures outside; he heard whispered voices.

The window creaked open. A hand reached down. Johnson saw a dark head appear in the narrow glass. He aimed his gun.

“Get away, you bastards!”

A sharp giggle startled him. They were kids, Chinese kids. He lowered his gun.

“Get away. Go on, get away.”

The giggling continued. Scraping footsteps, and he was alone again. He sighed. It was a good thing he hadn’t shot hastily, he thought.

There was more scraping.

“Didn’t you hear me? Get out of here!”

Probably they didn’t speak English, he thought. But most of the young ones had passable English. And the older ones spoke a lot more English than they were willing to admit they did.

Another head at the window, shadowy.

“Get away, you kids!”

“Mr. Johnson.” It was Kang.

“Yes?”

“I have the bad news for you.”

“What?”

“I think everybody know you here. People in laundry say talking you move boxes to this place.”

Johnson froze. Of course they knew. He’d merely exchanged one room in town for another. “Kang, you know my wagon?”

“Yes, yes.”

“It’s at the stable. Can you get it and bring it here?”

“Yes.”

It seemed he returned only a few minutes later.

“Tell your friends to load the boxes as fast as possible.”

Kang did that, and soon the wagon was loaded. Johnson gave them a dollar and told them to run away. “Kang, stay with me.”

Chinese Town was larger than it looked, with new streets being built constantly. Kang showed him how to guide the wagon through the narrow lanes. At one point they stopped as four horsemen went by in a hurry in the street ahead.

“Look for you, I think,” said Kang.

They eased out onto a side road, and in a few minutes they came to the tall pine where Johnson had buried Little Wind. The ground was still soft, and he and Kang gently exhumed Little Wind, holding their breaths as they pulled him out of the hole. The stench was wretched. The ten boxes took up the space of about two more graves, and Johnson widened the hole he had made for Little Wind and stacked the boxes as evenly as he could. Then he laid Little Wind on top of the boxes, as if he were sleeping atop them.

If I had my camera and it was daytime, I would take a photograph of that, Johnson told himself.

He piled the dirt back over Little Wind, spreading it around so the excess would not be so apparent, then brushed pine needles over the spot.

“This is our secret,” he told Kang.

“Yes, but it can be a better secret.”

“Yes, of course.” Johnson pulled a five-dollar gold piece from his pocket. “You do not tell anyone.”

“No, no.”

But he did not trust the boy not to talk. “When I leave, Kang, I will pay you another five dollars if you have kept the secret.”

“Another five dollar?”

“Yes, the day I leave Deadwood.”

A Shootout

Black Dick showed up in a rage at the Grand Hotel at breakfast time the same morning. He kicked open the door. “Where is the little bastard?”

His gaze fell on Johnson.

“I’m not a shooting man,” Johnson said, as calmly as he could.

“No coward is.”

“You may hold whatever opinion you like.”

“You shot Clem in the back. You are a yellow-bellied snake.”

“He was robbing my property.”

Dick spat. “You shot him in the back, you son of a poxy whore.”

Johnson shook his head. “I won’t be provoked.”

“Then hear this,” Dick said. “You meet me outside now, or I’ll go to that shed in Chinese Town and plug every one of your precious crates with dynamite and blow ’em to smithereens. Might blow up some of those Chinamen who helped you, too.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“I can’t see who might stop me. You care to watch me blow your precious bones?”

Johnson felt a strange deep fury fill him. All his frustrations, all the difficulties of his weeks in Deadwood, overwhelmed him. He was glad he had moved the crates. He began to breathe deeply, slowly. His face felt oddly tight.

“No,” Johnson said. He stood. “I’ll see you outside, Dick.”

“That’s fine,” Dick said. “I’ll be waiting on you.”

And Dick left, slamming the door behind him.

Johnson sat in the hotel dining room. The other breakfasters looked at him. Nobody spoke. Sunlight came in through the windows. He heard a bird chirping.

He heard the rattle of wagons in the street outside, the people shouting to each other to clear out, that there was going to be some gunplay. He heard Mrs. Wilson’s piano lessons in the next building, a child playing scales.

Johnson felt completely unreal.

Minutes later, Wyatt Earp hurried into the dining room. “What’s this foolishness about you and Dick Curry?”

“It’s true.”

Earp stared at him a moment, then said, “Take my advice and back out.”

“I’m not backing out,” Johnson said.

“Can you shoot?”

“Not real good.”

“That’s unfortunate.”

“But I’m going up against him anyway.”

“You want some advice, or you want to die your own way?”

“I will be grateful for any advice,” Johnson said. He noticed that his lip was quivering, his hand shaking.

“Sit down,” Earp said. “I been through lots of these, and it’s always the same. You get a pistoleer like Dick, he is pretty full of himself, and he has shot a man or two. He’s fast. But mostly his victims have been drunk or scared or both.”

“I surely am scared.”

“That’s fine. Just remember, most of these gunmen are cowards and bullies, they have a trick that works for them. You must avoid his tricks.”

“Such as what? What tricks?”

“Some of ’em try and rush you, some of ’em try and distract you—they smoke a cigar, toss it away, expecting your eyes naturally to follow it. Some of ’em try and talk to you. Some of ’em yawn, try to get you to yawn. Tricks.”

“What should I do?” Johnson’s heart was hammering so loudly he could hardly hear his own voice.

“When you go out there, you take your time. And never take your eyes off him—he may try and shoot you while you’re stepping into the street. Never take your eyes off him. Then take your position, put your feet wide, get your balance. Don’t let him engage you in talk. Concentrate on him. Never take your eyes off him, no matter what he does. Watch his eyes. You’ll see in his eyes when he’s going to make his play, even before his hand moves.”

“How will I see it?”

“You’ll see it, don’t worry. Let him fire first, you draw deliberate, you aim deliberate, and you squeeze off one shot right to the middle of his stomach. Don’t do anything fancy like aim for the head. Make it count. Shoot him in the stomach and kill him.”

“Oh God.” The reality of it was settling in on him.

“You sure you won’t back out?”

“No!”

“Fine,” Earp said. “I believe you’ll come out. Dick’s cocky, he thinks you’re a mark. You can’t ask for better than a cocky man to go up against.”

“I’m glad to hear of it.”

“You’ll come out,” Earp said again. “Is your gun loaded?”

“No.”

“Better load it, boy.”

Johnson stepped out of the hotel into the morning light. The main street of Deadwood was deserted. There was silence, except for Mrs. Wilson’s piano lesson, monotonous scales.

Black Dick was at the north end of the street, waiting. He puffed on a cigar. His broad hat put his face in deep shadow. Johnson had trouble seeing his eyes. He hesitated.

“Come on out, Foggy,” Dick called.

Johnson stepped away from the hotel, into the street. He felt his feet squish in the mud. He did not look down.

Keep your eyes on him. Never take your eyes off him.

Johnson moved to the middle of the street, stopped.

Get your balance, get your feet wide.

Clearly, he heard Mrs. Wilson’s voice say, “No, no, Charlotte. Tempo.”

Concentrate. Concentrate on him.

They were thirty feet apart, on the main street of Deadwood in the morning sunshine.

Dick laughed. “Come closer, Foggy.”

“This’ll do,” Johnson said.

“I can’t hardly see you, Foggy.”

Don’t let him talk to you. Watch him.

“I see fine,” Johnson said.

Dick laughed. The laugh trailed off into silence.

Watch his eyes. Watch his eyes.

“Any last requests, Foggy?”

Johnson did not answer. He felt his heart pounding in his chest.

Black Dick threw his cigar away. It sailed through the air, sputtered in the mud.

No matter what he does, never take your eyes off him.

Dick drew.

It happened very fast, Dick’s body was obscured by a cloud of dense black smoke, and two bullets whizzed past Johnson before his own gun was out, and he felt the third knock his hat off as he aimed and fired. His gun bucked in his hand. He heard a scream of pain.

“Son of a bitch! I’m hit!”

Johnson peered through the smoke, more confused than anything else. At first he could see nothing; Dick seemed to have disappeared entirely from the street.

Then the smoke cleared and he saw the figure writhing in the mud.

“You shot me! Damn! You shot me!”

Johnson stood and stared. Dick struggled to his feet, clutching his bleeding shoulder, his wounded arm hanging limply. He was covered in mud.

“Damn you!”

Finish him, thought Johnson.

But he had already killed a man and didn’t have the heart to shoot again now. He watched as Dick staggered across the street and swung onto his horse. “I’ll get you for this! I’ll get you,” he cried, and he rode out of town.

Johnson watched him go. He heard scattered cheers and applause from the surrounding buildings. He felt dizzy, and his legs went watery.

“You did good,” Earp said, “excepting you didn’t kill him.”

“I’m not a gunman.”

“That’s fine,” Earp said. “But mark, you should have killed him. It didn’t look to me his wounds were mortal, and now you have an enemy for life.”

“I couldn’t kill him, Wyatt.”

Earp looked at him for a while. “You’re a down-Easter, that’s the trouble. Haven’t got any common sense. You’re gonna have to get out of town pronto, you know.”

“Why is that?”

“Because, boy, you have a reputation now.”

Johnson laughed. “Everybody in town knows who I am.”

“Not anymore,” Earp said.

It turned out that Foggy Bill Johnson, the man who gunned down Clem Curry and then went up against his brother Dick, was indeed a notorious celebrity in Deadwood. Every man who fancied himself sharp with a gun was suddenly asking to meet him.

After two days of extricating himself from gunfights, Johnson realized that Earp was right. He would have to leave Deadwood soon. He had just enough money to buy fare and freight on the express stage, and purchased his ticket for the following day. When the light was low, he took one of the horses and checked to see that Little Wind’s grave had not been disturbed. So far, it hadn’t. The ground had hardened up in the cold and he had left no tracks. Even so, he forced himself to leave immediately, lest he be noticed.

Earp, meanwhile, had grown tired of gambling and a desultory courting of Miss Emily. He had expected Deadwood to offer him a position as marshal, but no offer was forthcoming, so he was going to head south for the winter.

“When’re you leaving?” Johnson asked.

“What’s it to you?”

“Perhaps you could ride with me.”

“With you and your bones?” Earp laughed. “Boy, every bandito and desperado from here to Cheyenne is just waiting for you to leave Deadwood with those bones.”

“I’d be sure to make it if you rode with me.”

“I think I’ll wait, to escort Miss Emily.”

“Miss Emily might come tomorrow, too, especially if you were riding with us.”

Earp fixed him with a steady look. “What’s in it for me, boy?”

“I bet the stage would pay you as a messenger.” A messenger was a guard; they made good money.

“Can’t you do any better than that?”

“I guess not.”

There was a silence. Finally, Earp said, “Tell you what. If I get you through to Cheyenne, you give me half your shipment.”

“Half my bones?”

“That’s right,” he said, smiling broadly and winking. “Half your bones. How’s that sound?”

“I realized then,” Johnson wrote on the evening of September 28,

that Mr. Earp was like all the others, and did not believe that these crates contained bones at all. I was faced with a moral dilemma. Mr. Earp had been friendly to me and helpful more than once. I was asking him to face real danger and he thought he was risking his life for treasure. It was my obligation to disabuse him of his greedy misconception. But I had received quite an education out West, one that Yale had been unable to provide. A man has to look out for himself, I’d learned. So all I said to him was, “Mr. Earp, you have cut yourself a deal.”

The stage would leave Deadwood the following morning.

He woke a few hours past midnight. It was time to retrieve the crates of bones. By prearrangement he had hired Kang to help him again, since no white man would want to dig up a dead Indian. They rode the wagon out of town, and the first thing they did was excavate Little Wind, who did not smell quite as bad as he had before, because of the cold air.

One by one the crates went into the wagon. They were dirty and moist from being underground but appeared otherwise fine. This time Johnson filled in most of the grave before returning Little Wind to the earth. He paused at the sight of him. The grotesquery was not Little Wind’s rotting, gray visage, Johnson realized; it was that he had now buried this poor man three times. Little Wind had died to protect him, and in return, he had not let him rest in peace.

The Cheyenne Road

Once in town, he continued to the stagecoach station. The coach was already there. It had started to snow again, and a chill wind moaned through Deadwood Gulch. Johnson was glad to be leaving, and methodically hoisted the crates onto the coach. Despite the assurances of the agent, the bones could not all ride up top with the enormously fat driver, Tiny Tim Edwards. Johnson was obliged to purchase an extra passenger seat and place some of them inside. Fortunately, the only passengers were Miss Emily and himself.

Then they had to wait for Wyatt Earp, who was nowhere to be found. Johnson stood in the snow with Miss Emily, looking up and down the bleak street of Deadwood.

“Maybe he’s not coming after all,” Johnson said.

“I think he will come,” Miss Emily said.

While they waited, a redheaded boy ran up to Johnson. “Mr. Johnson?”

“That’s right.”

The boy gave Johnson a note, and scampered away. Johnson opened it, read it quickly, and crumpled it.

“What is it?” Miss Emily asked.

“Just a good-bye from Judge Harlan.”

Around nine they saw the Earp brothers coming down the street toward them. They both appeared heavily burdened. “When they were closer,” Johnson wrote, “I saw that the Earps had obtained a collection of firearms. I had never seen Wyatt Earp wearing a gun before—he seldom went armed in public—but now he carried a veritable arsenal.”

Earp was late because he had to wait for Sutter’s Dry Goods to open, to obtain guns. He carried two sawed-off shotguns, three Pierce repeating rifles, four Colt revolvers, and a dozen boxes of ammunition.

Johnson said, “It appears you are expecting some warm work.”

Earp told Miss Emily to climb into the stage; then he said, “I don’t want to alarm her any.” And then he told Johnson that he thought they faced “a deal of trouble, and no point in pretending it won’t come.”

Johnson showed Earp the note, which read:

I PROMIS YOU ARE A DED MAN TO-DAY OR MY NAME IS NOT DICK CURRY.

“That’s fine,” Earp said. “We’re ready for him.”

Wyatt’s brother Morgan had made a lucrative deal to haul firewood and was planning to stay in Deadwood for the winter, but said that he would ride with Wyatt and the stage as far as Custer City, fifty miles to the south.

Tiny Tim leaned over the box. “You gents gonna palaver all day, or are you ready to crack leather?”

“We are,” Earp said.

“Then climb aboard this item. Can’t go nowhere standing in the street, can you?”

Johnson climbed onto the stage with Miss Emily, and for the tenth time that morning attended to his crates, cinching them down tightly. Morgan Earp climbed onto the top of the stage, and Wyatt rode shotgun.

A Chinese boy in cowboy boots came running toward the stagecoach. It was Kang, with a worried look on his face.

Johnson fished in his pocket and found a five-dollar gold piece.

“Kang!”

He leaned out the open door and flipped the glittering coin high into the air. Kang caught it on the run with remarkable grace. Johnson nodded at him, knowing he would never see the boy again.

Tim snapped his whips, the horses snorted, and they galloped out of Deadwood in the swirling snow.

It was a three-day journey to Fort Laramie: one day to Custer City, in the center of the Black Hills; a second day through the treacherous Red Canyon to the Red Canyon stagecoach station at the southern edge of the Black Hills; and the third day across the Wyoming plains to the newly built iron bridge that crossed the Platte River at Laramie.

Earp assured him the trip would get safer as they went, and if they reached Laramie, they would be entirely safe; from then on, the road from Laramie to Cheyenne was patrolled by cavalry.

If they reached Laramie.

“Three obstacles stood between us and our destination,” Johnson later wrote in his journal:

The first was Black Dick and his gang of ruffians. We could expect to meet them during the first day. Second was Persimmons Bill and his renegade Indians. We could expect to meet them in Red Canyon on the second day. And the third obstacle was the most dangerous of all—and wholly unanticipated by me.

Johnson had steeled himself for a dangerous journey, but he was unprepared for its sheer physical hazards.

The Black Hills roads were bad, necessitating slow travel. Drop-offs were precipitous, and the fact that the coach swayed ominously near the crumbling edge under its load of bones did not reassure them. Several creeks—the Bear Butte, Elk, and Boxelder—were transformed from the recent snows into swollen, raging rivers. The fact that the coach was so heavily laden made the crossings especially dangerous.

As Tiny explained it, “This item gets stuck in the quicksand, middle of the river, we don’t go anywheres less we ride back for an extra team, pull this item out, and that’s a fact.”

And along with the difficulties, they lived under the continuous threat of attack at any moment. The tension was nerve-racking, for the smallest impediment could be dangerous.

Around noon, the coach stopped. Johnson looked out. “Why are we stopping?”

“Keep your head in,” Earp snapped, “if you don’t want to lose it. Fallen tree up ahead.”

“So?”

Morgan Earp peered over from the top of the coach. “Miss Emily? I’d be much obliged, ma’am, if you would get yourself low and stay there until we’re moving again.”

“It’s just a fallen tree,” Johnson said. Soil was thin in many places in the Black Hills, and trees often fell across the road.

“Maybe so,” Earp said. “Maybe not.” He pointed out that high hills surrounded the road on all sides. The trees came right to the road, providing good close cover. “If they’re going for us, this’d be a good place.”

Tiny Tim got down off the box and went forward to inspect the fallen tree. Johnson heard the sharp clash-clack of shotguns being cocked.

“Is there really danger?” Miss Emily asked. She did not seem the least anxious.

“I guess there is,” Johnson said. He withdrew his pistol, looked down the barrel, spun the chambers.

Beside him, Miss Emily gave a little shiver of excitement.

But the tree was a small one, fallen by natural causes. Tiny moved it, and they drove on. An hour later, near Silver Peak and Pactola, they came upon a rockslide and repeated the procedure, but again, they had no trouble.

“When the attack finally came,” Johnson wrote, “it was almost a relief.”

Wyatt Earp shouted, “You below! Heads in!” and his shotgun roared.

It was answered by gunfire from behind them.

They were at the bottom of Sand Creek Gulch. The road ran straight here, with room on both sides for horsemen to keep up and discharge their guns into the open coach.

They heard Morgan Earp, directly above them, scraping over the roof of the coach, and they felt it sway as he took a position near the back. There was more firing. Wyatt called distinctly, “Get down, Morg, I’m shooting.” There was more firing. Tiny whipped the horses, cursed them.

Bullets thunked into the wood of the coach; Johnson and Emily ducked down, but the crates of fossils, precariously strapped to the seat above, threatened to tumble down on them. Johnson got up on his knees and tried to cinch them tighter. A horseman rode alongside the coach, aimed at Johnson—and in a sudden explosion disappeared from the horse.

Astonished, Johnson looked out.

“Foggy! Get your head in! I’m shooting!”

Johnson ducked back in, and Earp’s shotgun blasted past the open window. More gunshots from riders outside splintered the doorposts of the carriage; there was a scream.

Cursing and shouting, Tiny whipped the horses; the coach rocked and jolted over the rough road; inside the carriage, Johnson and Miss Emily collided and bounced against each other “in a manner which would be embarrassing were circumstances not so exigent,” Johnson later wrote. “The next period—it seemed hours, though it was probably a minute or two—was a nervous blend of whining bullets, galloping horses, shouts and screams, jolts and gunshots—until finally our coach rounded a bend, and we were out of Sand Creek Gulch, and the shooting died off, and we were safely on our way once more.

“We had survived the attack of the notorious Curry gang!”

“Only a damn fool would think so,” Wyatt said when they stopped to rest and change horses at the Tigerville coach station.

“Why, wasn’t that the Curry gang attacking us? And didn’t we get away?”

“Look, boy,” Wyatt said. “I know you’re from back East, but nobody’s that stupid.” He reloaded his shotguns as he spoke.

Johnson didn’t understand, so Morgan Earp explained. “Black Dick wants you pretty bad, and he wouldn’t risk all in such an ill-made attack.”

Johnson, who had found the attack terrifying, said, “Why was it ill-made?”

“Riskiest attack there is, on horseback,” Morgan said. “Riders can’t shoot worth a damn, the coach is always moving, and unless they can shoot one of the horses in the team, it’s very likely to get away, just as we did. There’s no certainty in a horseback attack.”

“Then why’d they try one?”

“To put us at our ease,” Wyatt said. “To put us off our guard. You mark my words, they know we have to stop and change teams at Tigerville. Right now they’re riding like hell to set up again.”

“Set up where?”

“If I knew that,” Wyatt said, “I wouldn’t be worried. What do you think, Morg?”

“Somewhere between here and Sheridan, I figure,” Morgan Earp said.

“That’s what I figure, too,” Wyatt Earp said, cracking his shotgun closed. “And the next time, they’ll really mean business.”

The Second Attack

Half an hour farther on, they halted at the edge of the pinewoods, before the sandy banks of Spring Creek. The meandering water was deceptively low, and more than a hundred yards wide. The late-afternoon sun glowed off the slow, peaceful ripples. On the far bank, the pinewoods were thick and dark.

They watched the river silently for several minutes. Finally, Johnson poked his head out to ask why they were waiting. Morgan Earp, on top of the stage, leaned over and tapped him on the head, and held his finger to his lips, to be silent.

Johnson sat back in the coach, rubbed his head, and looked questioningly at Miss Emily.

Miss Emily shrugged, and slapped a mosquito.

Several minutes passed before Wyatt Earp said to Tiny, “How’s it look to you?”

“Dunno,” Tiny said.

Earp peered at the tracks on the sandy riverbank. “Lot of horses passed here recently.”

“That’s usual,” Tiny said. “Sheridan’s just a couple of miles south on the other side.”

They fell silent again, waiting, listening to the quiet gurgle of the water, the wind in the pines.

“You know, there’s usually birds hereabouts at Spring Creek,” Tiny said finally.

“Too quiet?” Earp said.

“I’d say too quiet.”

“How’s the bottom?” Earp asked, looking at the river.

“Never know till you get there. You want to make a play?”

“I guess I do,” Earp said. He swung down off the box, walked back, and looked into the coach at Johnson and Miss Emily.

“We’re going to try to cross the creek,” he said quietly. “If we get across, fine. If we get trouble, you stay down, no matter what you see or hear. Morg knows what to do. Let him handle things. Okay?”

They nodded. Johnson’s throat was dry. “You think it’s a trap?”

Earp shrugged. “It’s a good place for one.”

He climbed back onto the box and cocked his shotgun. Tiny whipped up the horses, and they started across at breakneck speed, the coach lurching as the wheels hit the soft sandy banks, and then splashing and jouncing over rocks in the riverbed.

And then the shooting started. Johnson heard the whinny of the horses, and with a final lurch the coach stopped abruptly, right in the middle of the river, and Tiny shouted, “That tears it!” and Morgan Earp began firing rapidly. “I’ll cover you, Wyatt.”

Johnson and Miss Emily ducked down. Bullets whined all around them, and the coach rocked as the men moved above them. Johnson peeked over the sill and saw Wyatt Earp running, splashing through the river toward the far shore.

“He’s leaving! Wyatt’s leaving us!” Johnson cried, and then a fusillade sent him diving for cover again.

“He wouldn’t abandon us,” Emily said.

“He just did!” Johnson shouted. He was completely panicked. Suddenly the coach door swung open and Johnson screamed as Tiny threw himself in, landing on top of them.

Tiny was gasping and white-faced; he pulled the door shut as a half dozen bullets splintered the wood.

“What’s happening?” Johnson asked.

“Ain’t no place for me out there,” Tiny said.

“But what’s happening?”

“We’re stuck in the middle of the damn river, that’s what’s happening,” Tiny said. “They killed one of the team, so we ain’t going nowhere, and the Earp boys are shooting away like blazes. Wyatt took off.”

“They have a plan?”

“I surely hope so,” Tiny said. “’Cause I don’t.” As the gunfire continued, he clasped his hands together and closed his eyes. His lips twitched.

“What’re you doing?”

“Praying,” Tiny said. “You better, too. ’Cause if Black Dick takes this stage, he’ll just naturally kill us all.”

In the reddish afternoon light, the stagecoach sat immobile in the middle of Spring Creek. On top of the stage, Morgan Earp lay flat and fired into the trees on the opposite shore. Wyatt made it safely to the far bank, and plunged into the pinewoods opposite.

Almost immediately, the shooting from the far side diminished: the Curry gang had something new to worry about now.

Then from the far shore there was a shotgun blast and a loud scream, agonizing. It trailed away into silence. After a moment, another shotgun blast, and a strangled cry.

The Curry gang stopped firing at the coach.

Then a voice cried, “Don’t shoot, Wyatt, please don’t—” and another blast.

Suddenly half a dozen voices on the far shore were shouting to each other, and then they heard horses galloping off.

And then nothing.

Morgan Earp knocked on the roof of the coach. “It’s finished,” he said. “They’re gone. You can breathe now.”

The passengers inside struggled to their feet, brushed themselves off. Johnson looked out and saw Wyatt Earp standing on the far bank, grinning. His sawed-off shotgun hung loosely in his hand.

He walked slowly back through the stream toward them. “First rule of a bushwhacking,” he said. “Always run toward the direction of fire, not away.”

“How many’d you kill?” Johnson asked. “All of them?”

Earp grinned again. “None of them.”

“None of them?”

“Those woods’re thick; you can’t see ten feet ahead of you. I’d never find ’em in there. But I knew they were spread out along the bank and probably couldn’t see each other directly. So I just shot my gun a few times, and made a few hideous cries.”

“Wyatt can really make hideous cries,” Morgan said.

“That’s so,” Wyatt said. “The Curry gang panicked and ran.”

“You mean you just tricked them?” Johnson said. In a strange way he felt disappointed.

“Listen,” Wyatt Earp said. “One reason I’m still alive is I don’t go asking for trouble. These boys are none too quick, and they got an active imagination. Besides, we got a bigger problem than getting rid of the Curry boys.”

“We do?”

“Yeah. We got to get this coach out of the river.”

“Why is that a problem?”

Earp sighed. “Boy, you ever tried to move a dead horse?”

It took an hour to cut the animal loose, and float it downstream. Johnson watched the dark carcass drift with the current until it had disappeared. With the five remaining horses of the team, they managed to haul the coach out of the sand and onto the far shore. By then it was dark, and they drove quickly to Sheridan, where they obtained a fresh team.

Sheridan was a small town of fifty wooden houses, but it seemed everyone had turned out to greet them; Johnson was surprised to see money changing hands.

Earp collected a lot of it.

“What’s going on?”

“They were wagering on whether we’d make it,” Earp said. “I had a few bets myself.”

“Which way’d you bet?”

Earp just smiled and nodded to a saloon. “You know, it would be sporting for you to go inside with me and buy a round of whiskey.”

“You think we should drink at a time like this?”

“We won’t see any more trouble until Red Canyon,” Earp said, “and I’m thirsty.”

Red Canyon

They reached the town of Custer at ten o’clock at night. The night was dark, and Johnson was disappointed; he couldn’t see much of the most famous place in the Black Hills, the Gordon Stockade at French Creek.

Just one year before, in 1875, the first miners of the Gordon party had built log cabins surrounded by a wooden fence ten feet high. They had entered the Black Hills in defiance of the Indian treaty, and they intended to pan for gold and hold off the Indians with their stockade. It had taken a cavalry expedition from Fort Laramie to get them out; in those days the army was still enforcing the Indian treaty, and the stockade stood deserted.

Now, everyone at Custer was talking about the new Indian treaty. Although the government was still fighting the Sioux in the field, the cost of the war was high—already in excess of $15 million—and it was an election year. Both the expense of the fighting and the legitimacy of the government’s position were hot campaign issues in Washington. Therefore, the Great White Father preferred to conclude the war peacefully, by negotiating a new treaty, and to this end, government negotiators had arranged to meet with Sioux chieftains in Sheridan.

But even specially picked chiefs were disgusted by the new proposals. Most of the government negotiators agreed with them. One of them, now on his way back to Washington, said to Johnson that it was “the hardest damn thing I ever did in my life. I don’t care how many feathers a man wears in his hair, he’s still a man. One of them, Red Legs, looked at me and said, ‘Do you think this is fair? Would you sign such a paper?’ And I could not meet his eyes. It made me sick.

“You know what Thomas Jefferson said?” the man continued. “In 1803, Thomas Jefferson said that it would take a thousand years before the West was fully settled. And it’ll be settled in less’n a hundred years. That’s progress.”

Johnson recorded in his journal that “he seemed an honest man sent to do a dishonest job, and now he could not forgive himself for carrying out the instructions of his government. He was drunk when we arrived, and drinking more when we left.”

Morgan Earp left them at Custer, and they went on without him. By midnight, they had passed Fourmile Ranch, and headed into Pleasant Valley. They passed Twelvemile Ranch, and Eighteenmile Ranch in the darkness.

Shortly before dawn, they reached the entrance to Red Canyon.

The Red Canyon coach station had been burned to the ground. All the horses had been stolen. Flies buzzed around a half dozen scalped bodies, evidence of Persimmons Bill’s depredations.

“Guess they didn’t hear about the new treaty,” Earp said laconically. “I reckon we won’t be eating here.”

They proceeded immediately through the canyon. It was a tense journey, slow because they had no fresh team, but they made it without incident. At the far end of the canyon they followed Hawk Creek toward Camp Collier, which marked the southern entrance to the Black Hills.

Now, in the morning light, they stopped for an hour to graze the horses, and to breathe a long sigh of relief. “Not long now, Mr. Johnson,” Earp said, “and you’ll be owing me half those bones.”

Johnson decided it was time to tell him the truth. “Mr. Earp,” he began.

“Yes?”

“I appreciate everything you have done to help me get out of Deadwood, naturally.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“But there’s something I have to tell you.”

Earp frowned. “You’re not backing out on your deal?”

“No, no.” Johnson shook his head. “But I have to tell you, the crates really are just fossil bones.”

“Uh-huh,” Wyatt Earp said.

“They are just bones.”

“I heard you.”

“They are of value only to scientists, to paleontologists.”

“That’s fine with me.”

Johnson smiled wanly. “I only hope you won’t be too disappointed.”

“I’ll try not to be,” Earp said, and winked, and punched him on the shoulder. “You just remember, boy. Half those bones are mine.”

“He had been a strong friend,” Johnson wrote, “and I suspected he would make a dangerous enemy. Thus it was with some trepidation that I resumed the journey to Fort Laramie, and the first civilization I had seen in many months.”

Fort Laramie

Fort Laramie was an army outpost that had grown into a frontier town, but the army garrison still set the mood, and its mood was now bitter. The army had fought the Indians for more than eight months, and had suffered serious losses, most especially the massacre of Custer’s column at the Little Bighorn. There had been other bloody engagements as well, at Powder River and Slim Buttes, and even when they were not fighting, the campaign had been harsh and arduous. But all the news from the East told them that Washington and the rest of the country did not support their efforts; numerous articles criticized the military conduct of the campaign against “the noble and defenseless red man.” For young men who had seen their comrades fall, who had returned to a battle scene to bury the scalped and mutilated bodies of friends, who had seen corpses with their genitals cut off and stuffed in their mouths—for these soldiers, the Eastern commentary made for difficult reading.

As far as the army was concerned, they had been ordered to undertake this war, without being asked their opinion of either its feasibility or its morality; they had followed orders as best they could, and with considerable success, and they were angry now to be unsupported, and to be fighting an unpopular war.

The fact that the politicians in Washington had underestimated both the difficulty of a campaign against “mere savages” and the outrage that it would cause among the liberal establishment of the Eastern cities—uninformed writers who had never set eyes on a real Indian, and who had only fantasies of what the Indians were like—was no fault of the army.

As one captain put it, “They want the Indians eliminated, and the lands opened up to white settlers, but they don’t want anybody to get hurt in the process. That just ain’t possible.”

Added to this was the ugly fact that the war had now entered a new phase. The army was engaged in a war of attrition with the Indians, in which they planned to kill all the buffalo and thus starve the Indians into submission. Even so, most military men expected the war to drag on for at least three more years, and to cost another $15 million—although nobody in Washington wanted to hear that.

The arguments, back and forth, raged in the coach station on the outskirts of town. Johnson had an unappetizing lunch of bacon and biscuits, then sat in the sun outside the station. From where he sat, he could see the iron bridge crossing the Platte.

For more than a decade, the Platte River valley had been trumpeted by Union Pacific brochures as “a flowery meadow of great fertility clothed in nutritious grasses, and watered by numerous streams.” In fact, it was harsh, god-awful country. Yet the settlers were coming.

From the earliest pioneer days, the Platte River itself was known as especially treacherous and difficult to cross, and this new iron bridge represented one small improvement in a series of changes that were opening the West to settlers, making it more accessible.

Johnson dozed off in the sun and awoke when a voice said, “Hell of a sight, ain’t it?”

He opened his eyes. A tall man was smoking a cigar and staring at the bridge.

“That it is,” he said.

“I remember last year, that bridge was just talk.” The tall man turned. He had a scar running down his cheek. The face was familiar, but the recognition came slowly.

Navy Joe Benedict.

Marsh’s right-hand man.

Johnson sat up quickly. He had only a moment to wonder what Navy Joe was doing here before a familiar heavyset figure emerged from the coach house and stood beside Benedict.

Professor Marsh glanced at Johnson and said in his formal way, “Good morning to you, sir.” He gave no sign of recognition and immediately turned to Benedict. “What’s the delay, Joe?”

“Just hitching up a new team, Professor. We’ll be ready to leave in the space of fifteen or twenty minutes.”

“See if you can quicken it,” Marsh said.

Navy Joe left, and Marsh turned to Johnson. He appeared not to recognize him, for Johnson looked very different from the last time Marsh had seen him. He was leaner and more muscled, with a full beard, and hair that had not seen scissors since leaving Philadelphia more than three months before. It hung down almost to his shoulders. His clothes were rough and dirty, caked in mud.

Marsh said, “Just passing through?”

“That’s right.”

“Which way you going?”

“To Cheyenne.”

“Come from the Hills?”

“Yeah.”

“Whereabouts?”

“Deadwood.”

“Mining gold?”

“Yeah,” Johnson said.

“Strike it rich?”

“Not exactly,” Johnson said. “What about you?”

“In point of fact, I myself am going north into the Hills.”

“Mining gold?” Johnson asked, to his private amusement.

“Hardly. I am the professor of paleontology at Yale College,” Marsh said. “I study fossil bones.”

“That right?” Johnson could not believe that Marsh had not recognized him, but it seemed he had not.

“Yes,” Marsh said. “And I hear there are some fossil bones to be had in Deadwood.”

“In Deadwood? That right?”

“That’s what I hear,” Marsh said. “Apparently a young man has them in his possession. I hope to obtain them. I am willing to pay well for them.”

“Oh?”

“Yes indeed.” Marsh took out a fat roll of greenbacks, and inspected them in the sunlight. “I would also pay for information about this young man and his whereabouts.” He looked closely at Johnson. “If you take my meaning.”

“I don’t reckon I do,” Johnson said.

“Well, you’ve just come from Deadwood,” Marsh said. “I wonder if you know anything of this young man.”

“This man got a name?” Johnson asked.

“His name is Johnson. He’s quite an unscrupulous young fellow. He used to work for me.”

“That right?”

“Indeed. But he left my company and threw in with a band of thieves and robbers. I believe he’s wanted for murder in other territories.”

“That right?”

Marsh nodded. “You know anything of him?”

“Never heard of him. How you going to get those bones?”

“Buy them if necessary,” Marsh said. “But I intend to have them, by whatever means may be required.”

“You want ’em bad, then.”

“Yes, I do,” Marsh said. “You see,” he said, pausing for dramatic effect, “these bones I’m talking about are actually mine. Young Johnson stole them from me.”

Johnson felt rage sweep over him. He had been enjoying this charade, but now he was flushed with anger. It took every bit of self-control he could muster to say laconically, “That right?”

“He’s a lying skunk, no doubt of it,” Marsh said.

“Sounds a bad one,” Johnson said.

At that moment, Wyatt Earp came around the corner and said, “Hey, Johnson! On your pegs! We’re moving out.”

Marsh smiled at Johnson. “You little son of a bitch,” he said.

The Laramie Bone Deal

“It seemed,” wrote Johnson in his journal, “that many pigeons had come home to roost in Laramie.”

Most of the town was preoccupied with another figure from Johnson’s past, Broken Nose Jack McCall. Jack had run from Deadwood and had gotten to Laramie, where he had bragged about killing Wild Bill Hickok. The reason he spoke so freely was that a miners’ court in Deadwood had tried him for that murder, and had acquitted him when he claimed that Wild Bill had killed his young brother many years before, and he was just avenging that crime. In Laramie, Jack talked openly of killing Hickok, certain that he could not be tried twice for the same crime.

But Jack didn’t realize that the Deadwood miners’ court was not legally recognized, and he was promptly thrown into jail in Laramie and formally tried for Hickok’s murder. Since Jack had already publicly admitted to it, the trial was short; he was convicted and sentenced to be hanged, a turn of events that “irked him mightily.”

While Jack’s trial was going on, an episode far more important to William Johnson was occurring down the road in Sutter’s Saloon. Wyatt Earp was sitting at a table, drinking whiskey with Othniel C. Marsh and negotiating for the sale of half Johnson’s bones.

They were both hard bargainers, and it took most of the day. For his part, Earp appeared amused.

Johnson sat with Miss Emily in the corner and watched the proceedings. “I can’t believe this is happening,” he said.

“Why does it surprise you?” she asked.

“What were my chances of running into that professor?” He sighed. “One in a million, or less.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” she said. “Wyatt knew Professor Marsh was in the territory.”

A slow creeping sensation moved up Johnson’s spine. “He did?”

“Surely.”

“How did he know?”

“I was with him in the hotel dining room,” she said, “when he heard the rumor that there was some college teacher in Cheyenne buying up all manner of fossils and asking about some bones in Deadwood. The miners were all laughing about it, but Wyatt’s eyes lit up when he heard the story.”

Johnson frowned. “So he decided to help me get the bones out of Deadwood to Cheyenne?”

“Yes,” she said. “We left the day after he heard that story.”

“You mean Wyatt always intended to sell my bones to Marsh, from the beginning?”

“I believe so,” she said softly.

Johnson glared across the saloon at Earp. “And I thought he was my friend.”

“You thought he was a fool,” Emily said. “But he is your friend.”

“How can you say that? Look at him bargaining there, haggling over every dollar. At this rate they’ll be at it all day.”

“Yes,” Emily said. “Yet I’m sure Wyatt could conclude the deal in five minutes, if that was what he intended.”

Johnson stared at her. “You mean . . .”

She nodded. “I’ve no doubt he’s wondering why you are sitting here while he stalls Professor Marsh for you.”

“Oh, Emily,” he cried, “I could kiss you!”

“I wish you would,” she said softly.

“Too many things were happening at once,” wrote Johnson.

My head was fairly spinning with these developments. I hurried outside with Emily, and postponed kissing her in order to send her off for a hundred-pound sack of rice, a bolt of tarp cloth, and a long-handled shovel. Meanwhile I hastily obtained the requisite large rocks, which fortunately were near at hand, remnants of the blasting that had been done to erect the new Platte bridge.

He found yet another Chinese laundry and paid a small sum to use the fire and iron kettle with which they heated water. He spent three hours boiling fresh rice paste, making sure the concoction was gelatinous enough, and clutching the rocks with bamboo laundry tongs and dipping them into the pasty ooze, coating them. When they were dry, he poured dust over them, to make them suitably grimy. Next to the heat of the fire, they dried quickly. Finally, he removed the precious bones from all ten crates, and placed the new stones in the old crates, closing them carefully so that there would be no marks indicating they had been opened.

By five that afternoon, he was exhausted. But all of Johnson’s fossil bones were safely hidden in the back of the stable, wrapped in tarp cloth and buried under a pile of fresh manure, the shovel hidden in the straw with them and the substitutions set out with a tarp covering, as the originals had been. Earp and Marsh arrived soon after. Marsh grinned at Johnson. “I expect this will be our last meeting, Mr. Johnson.”

“I hope so,” Johnson said, with a sincerity Marsh could not have imagined.

The division was begun. Marsh wanted to open all ten crates and inspect the fossils before dividing, but Johnson steadfastly refused. The division was meant to be between him and Earp, and it would be done randomly. Marsh grumbled but agreed.

Midway through the process, Marsh said, “I think I had better look at one of these crates, to satisfy myself.”

“I have no objection,” Earp said. He looked directly at Johnson.

“I have plenty of objections,” Johnson said.

“Oh? What are they?” Marsh asked.

“I’m in a hurry,” Johnson said. “And besides . . .”

“Besides?”

“There’s your father,” Emily prompted him suddenly.

“Yes, there’s my father,” Johnson said. “How much did Professor Marsh offer you for these stones, Wyatt?”

“Two hundred dollars,” Wyatt said.

“Two hundred dollars? That’s an outrage.”

“It is two hundred more than you have, I believe,” Marsh said.

“Look, Wyatt,” said Johnson. “There’s a telegraph office here in Laramie. I can cable my father for funds, and by this time tomorrow I can give you five hundred dollars for your share.”

Marsh darkened. “Mr. Earp, we have made our deal.”

“That’s so,” Earp said. “But I like the sound of five hundred dollars.”

“I’ll give you six,” Marsh said. “Now.”

“Seven fifty,” Johnson said. “Tomorrow.”

Marsh said, “Mr. Earp, I thought we had a deal.”

“It’s amazing,” Earp said, “how things keep changing in this world.”

“But you don’t even know if this young man can come up with the money.”

“I suspect he can.”

“Eight hundred,” Johnson said.

Half an hour later, Marsh pronounced himself happy to take Earp’s share of the bones, at once and without inspection, for a thousand dollars in cash. “But I want that box,” he said suddenly, spying the one with the small X on the side. “That means something.”

“No!” yelled Johnson.

Marsh drew his weapon. “It would appear that box has contents that are especially valuable. And if you believe that your life is also especially valuable, Mr. Johnson, which I do not, then I suggest you let me remove this crate without further discussion.”

Marsh had the boxes loaded onto a wagon, and he and Navy Joe Benedict headed north, toward Deadwood, to retrieve the rest of the bones.

“What does he mean, the rest of the bones?” Johnson asked, as he saw the wagon drive off into the sunset.

“I told him there was another thousand pounds we left behind in Deadwood, hidden in Chinese Town, only you didn’t want him to know about them,” Earp said.

“We better get moving,” Johnson said. “He won’t go far before he cracks open one of those cases and finds he has bought worthless granite. And he’ll be back hopping mad.”

“I’m ready to go,” Earp said, thumbing through the money. “I feel well satisfied with my return on this trip.”

“There’s one problem, of course.”

“You need crates to replace the ones you just lost,” said Earp. “I bet the army garrison has some, given their need for provisions.”

Within an hour they had procured ten crates of more or less equal size as the ones Marsh had taken. Johnson unearthed the bones from their manure bed, and packed them carefully but quickly. The box containing the dragon teeth received another X, which satisfied him more than he could say.

They left, within minutes, for Cheyenne.

Earp was up on the box with Tiny. Inside the coach, Miss Emily stared at him. “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“I think I’ve been very patient.”

“I thought you might be Wyatt’s girl,” he said.

“Wyatt’s girl? Wherever would you get an idea like that?”

“Well, I thought so.”

“Wyatt Earp is a scoundrel and a drifter. The man lives for excitement, gambling, shooting, and other pursuits of no substance.”

“And me?”

“You’re different,” she said. “You’re brave, but you are also refined. I bet you kiss real refined, too.”

She was waiting.

“I learned,” Johnson wrote in his journal, “one immediate lesson, which was the unwisdom of kissing aboard a bucking stagecoach. My lip was deeply bitten and the blood flowed freely, which inhibited, but did not stop, further explorations of this nature.”

He added, “I hope she did not know I had never kissed a girl before, in the passionate French way which seemed to be to her liking. Except for that one time with Lucienne. But I will say this for Emily. If she did know, she did not say anything, and for that—and for other experiences with her in Cheyenne—I am eternally grateful.”

Cheyenne

In the unimaginable splendor of a room at the Inter-Ocean Hotel (which he had previously seen as a roach-infested dump), Johnson took his ease for several days, with Emily. But first, upon arrival and signing the hotel register, he ascertained that the Inter-Ocean maintained a steel-walled strong room, with one of the new combination time locks, developed for banks against would-be bank robbers. The boxes were carried into the room by the porters. He tipped them generously so that they would not resent him and whisper about the boxes to their less friendly colleagues.

The first day, he soaked in four baths in succession, for after each he found his body was still dirty. It seemed as though the dust of the prairie would never leave his skin.

He visited the barber, who trimmed his hair and beard. It was startling to sit in the chair and inspect his own face in the mirror. He could not get used to it; his features were unfamiliar; he had the face of a different person—leaner, harder, determination now in his features. And there was the scar over his upper lip; he rather liked it, and so did Emily. The barber stepped back, scissors in one hand, comb in the other. “How’s that look, sir?” Like everyone else in Cheyenne, the barber treated Johnson with respect. It wasn’t because he was rich—no one in Cheyenne knew he was rich—but rather because of something in his manner, his bearing. Without meaning to do so, he looked like a man who might shoot another one—because he now had.

“Sir? How does that look?” the barber asked again.

Johnson didn’t know. Finally, he said, “I like it fine.”

He took Emily to dinner in the best restaurant in town. They dined on oysters from California, and wine from France, and poulet à l’estragon. She recognized the name of the wine, he noticed. After dinner they walked arm in arm on the streets of the town. He remembered how dangerous Cheyenne had felt when he had been here before. Now it seemed a sleepy little railway junction, populated by braggarts and gamblers putting on airs. Even the toughest-looking customers stepped aside on the boardwalk when he passed.

“They see you wear a gun,” Emily said, “and you know how to use it.”

Pleased, Johnson took Emily back to the hotel early, and to bed. They stayed in bed most of the following day. He had a wonderful time, and so did she.

“Where will you go now?” she asked him on the third day.

“Back to Philadelphia,” he said.

“I’ve never been to Philadelphia,” she said.

“You’ll love it there,” he said, smiling.

She smiled back, happily. “You really want me to come?”

“Of course.”

“Really?”

“Don’t be silly,” he said.

But he began to feel that she was always one step ahead of him. She seemed to know the hotel better than he would have expected, and enjoyed an easy overfamiliarity with the men behind the desk and the waiters in the dining room. Some even seemed to recognize her. And when he and Emily strolled the streets and window-shopped, she recognized Eastern fashions readily.

“I think this one’s very pretty.”

“It seems out of place here, not that I am the expert.”

“Well, a Western girl likes to know what’s fashionable.”

He would have reason to ponder this statement later.

A few steps along the wooden walkway, she said, “What sort of person is your mother?”

Johnson had not thought of his mother for a long time. The very thought was jolting in some way. “Why did you ask that?”

“I was just wondering about meeting her.”

“How do you mean?”

“Whether she will like me.”

“Ah, of course.”

“Do you think she’ll like me, Bill?”

“Oh, she’ll like you fine,” Johnson said.

“You don’t sound convinced.” She pouted prettily.

“Don’t be silly,” he said, and squeezed her arm.

“Let’s go back to the hotel,” she said. And quickly, she licked his ear.

“Stop it, Emily.”

“What’s the matter? I thought you liked that.”

“I do, but not here. Not in public.”

“Why? Nobody’s looking at us.”

“I know, but it’s not proper.”

“What difference does it make?” She was frowning. “If nobody is looking at us, what possible difference could it make?”

“I don’t know, it just does.”

“You’re back in Philadelphia already,” she said, stepping away and staring at him.

“Now, Emily . . .”

“You are.”

But all he said was, “Don’t be silly.”

“I’m not being silly,” she said. “And I’m not going to Philadelphia.”

He did not know what to say.

“I just wouldn’t fit in,” she said, wiping a tear from her cheek.

“Emily . . .”

She cried openly. “I know what you are thinking, Bill. I’ve known for days now.”

“Emily, please . . .” He had no idea what she meant, for the last three days had been the most deliriously pleasurable of his life.

“It’s no good—don’t touch me, please—it’s no good, that’s all.”

They walked back to the hotel, side by side, not speaking. She held her head high and sniffled occasionally. He was uncomfortable, clumsy, not knowing what to do.

After a time, he glanced at her and saw that she was no longer crying. She was furious. “After all I did for you,” she said. “Why, you’d be long dead from Dick if I hadn’t helped you, and you’d never have gotten out of Deadwood if I hadn’t talked Wyatt into helping you, and you’d have lost your bones in Laramie if I hadn’t helped you see a plan . . .”

“That’s true, Emily.”

“And this is the thanks I get! You cast me aside like an old rag.”

She was really angry. Yet somehow he realized it was he who was being cast aside. “Emily . . .”

“I said don’t touch me!”

It was a relief when the sheriff came up to them, tipped his hat politely to Emily, and said, “You William Johnson of Philadelphia?”

“I am.”

“You the one staying at the Inter-Ocean?”

“I am.”

“You have some identification of who you are?”

“Of course.”

“That’s fine,” the sheriff said, taking out his gun. “You’re under arrest. For the murder of William Johnson.”

“But I am William Johnson.”

“I can’t see how. William Johnson is dead. So whoever you are, you’re surely not him, are you?”

Handcuffs were snapped on his wrists. He looked at her. “Emily, tell him.”

Emily turned on her heel and walked away without a word.

“Emily!”

“Let’s go, mister,” the sheriff said, and pushed Johnson toward the jail.

It took a while for the details to come out. His first day in Cheyenne, Johnson had cabled his father in Philadelphia, asking him to send $500. His father had immediately cabled the sheriff’s office to report that someone in Cheyenne was impersonating his dead son.

Everything Johnson produced—his Yale class ring, some crumpled correspondence, a newspaper clipping from the Deadwood Black Hills Weekly Pioneer—was taken as proof that he had robbed a dead man and probably killed him as well.

“This fellow Johnson’s a college man from back East,” the sheriff said, squinting judiciously at Johnson. “Now that couldn’t be you, could it.”

“But it is,” Johnson insisted.

“He’s rich, too.”

“I am.”

The sheriff laughed. “That’s a good one,” he said. “You’re a rich college man from back East, and I’m Santa Claus.”

“Ask the girl. Ask Emily.”

“Oh, I did,” the sheriff said. “She said she’s real disappointed in you, you gave her a big story about yourself and now she sees you for what you are. She’s living it up in your hotel room and selling off those crates of whatever it is you brought with you to town.”

“What?”

“She’s no friend of yours, mister,” the sheriff said.

“She can’t sell those crates!”

“I don’t see why not. She says they’re hers.”

“They’re mine!”

“It’s no good getting all hot like this,” the sheriff said. “I checked with some folks come down from Deadwood. Seems you showed up there with a dead Indian and a dead white man. I’ll lay you a hundred to one that white man was William Johnson.”

Johnson started to explain, but the sheriff held up his hand. “I’m sure you got a story to explain it,” he said. “Your type always does.”

The sheriff went out of the jail. Johnson heard the deputy say, “Who is that fella?”

“Some desperado, putting on airs,” the sheriff said, and he went out for a drink.

The deputy was a boy of sixteen. Johnson traded him his boots to send a second telegram to Philadelphia.

“Sheriff’ll be mighty angry if he finds out,” the deputy said. “He wants you to go to Yankton to be tried for murder.”

“Just send it,” Johnson said, writing quickly.

Dear Father:

Sorry I wrecked yacht. Remember pet squirrel summer 71. Mother’s fever after Edward born. Headmaster Ellis warning at Exeter. I am truly alive and you are causing great trouble. Send money and inform sheriff.

Your loving son Pinky.

The deputy read the telegram slowly, mouthing the words. He looked up. “Pinky?”

“Just send it,” Johnson said.

“Pinky?”

“That was my name as a baby.”

The deputy shook his head. But he sent the telegram.

“Now look here, Mr. Johnson,” the sheriff said, unlocking the cell a few hours later. “It was an honest mistake. I was only doing my duty.”

“You got the telegram?” Johnson said.

“I got three telegrams,” the sheriff said. “One from your father, one from Senator Cameron of Pennsylvania, and one from Mr. Hayden at the Geological Survey in Washington. For all I know there are more coming. I’m telling you it was an honest mistake.”

“That’s fine,” Johnson said.

“No hard feelings?”

But Johnson had other things on his mind. “Where’s my gun?”

He found Emily in the lobby of the Inter-Ocean Hotel. She was drinking wine.

“Where are my crates?”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“What have you done with my crates, Emily?”

“Nothing.” She shook her head. “They are just old bones. Nobody wants ’em.”

Relieved, Johnson collapsed in a chair beside her.

“I can’t see why they are so important to you,” she said.

“They are, that’s all.”

“Well, I hope you got some money because the hotel is asking for the bill and my smiling at the desk man is wearing thin.”

“I have money. My father sent—”

She wasn’t listening, however, but staring across the room past him. Her eyes lit up: “Collis!”

Johnson turned to look. Behind him, a heavyset, dour man in a dark suit was checking into the hotel at the front desk. The man looked over. He had the mournful expression of a basset hound. “Miranda? Miranda Lapham?”

Johnson frowned. “Miranda?”

Emily was standing, beaming. “Collis Huntington, whatever are you doing in Cheyenne?”

“Bless me, it’s Miranda Lapham!”

“Miranda? Lapham?” Johnson said, not only confused by Emily’s new name but by the sudden idea that he might not have known her real identity at all. And why had she lied to him?

The heavyset man embraced Emily with warm and lingering familiarity. “Why, Miranda, you look wonderful, simply wonderful.”

“It’s delightful to see you, Collis.”

“Let me look at you,” he said, stepping back, beaming. “You haven’t changed a bit, Miranda. I don’t mind telling you I’ve missed you, Miranda.”

“And I you, Collis.”

The heavy man turned to Johnson. “This beautiful young lady is the best lobbyist the railroads ever had in Washington.”

Johnson said nothing. He was still trying to put it together. Collis Huntington, Washington, railroads . . . My God—Collis Huntington! One of the Big Four of the Central Pacific in California. Collis Huntington, the blatant corruptionist who traveled each year to Washington with a suitcase full of money for the congressmen, the man once described as “scrupulously dishonest.”

“Everyone misses you, Miranda,” Huntington went on. “They all ask for you still. Bob Arthur—”

“Dear Senator Arthur—”

“And Jack Kearns—”

“Commissioner Kearns, what a dear man—”

“And even the general—”

“The general? He still asks for me?”

“He does,” Huntington said sadly, shaking his head. “Why don’t you come back, Miranda? Washington was always your first love.”

“All right,” she said suddenly. “You’ve convinced me.”

Huntington turned to Johnson. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your companion?”

“He’s nobody,” Miranda Lapham said, shaking her head so her curls moved prettily. She took Huntington’s arm. “Come, Collis, we’ll have a delicious lunch and you can tell me the news of Washington. And there is so much to do, you will have to find me a house, of course, and I will need some setting up . . .”

They moved away, arm in arm, to the dining room.

Johnson sat there, stunned.

At eight the next morning, feeling he had lived a decade in a few months, he took the Union Pacific train east, all ten crates stored in the rattling luggage car. The monotony of the voyage was most enjoyable, and he marked the greening of the landscape. The arrival of autumn could be seen in the top leaves of the oaks and maples and apple trees. At each stop, he would get off and buy the local newspapers, noticing an Eastern point of view creeping into the editorials about the Indian Wars—and various other topics.

On the morning of the fourth day, in Pittsburgh, he telegraphed Cope to say he had survived and would like to come speak with him; he said nothing about the crates of bones. Then he telegraphed his parents and asked that they have an extra place set for dinner that night.

He arrived in Philadelphia on October 8.

Four Meetings

At the train station, Johnson hired a man with an empty greengrocer’s wagon to take him to Cope’s house on Pine Street in Philadelphia. It wasn’t a long trip, and he arrived to find that Cope owned two matching three-story stone row houses, one a residence and the other a private museum and offices. Most surprising was that Cope lived perhaps only seven or eight blocks from Rittenhouse Square, where Johnson’s mother was even now preparing for his arrival.

“Which house is the residence?” he asked the wagon owner.

“I do not know, but I think that fellow will tell you,” the man said, pointing.

It was Cope himself, bouncing down the steps. “Johnson!”

“Professor!”

He gave Johnson a firm handshake and a decisively strong hug.

“You’re alive and—” He spied the tarp over the back of the wagon. “Is it possible?”

Johnson nodded. “It wasn’t impossible, is perhaps my best answer.”

The crates were taken directly into the museum half of Cope’s property. Mrs. Cope came in with lemonade and wafers, and they sat down; they oohed over his stories, fussed over his appearance, exclaimed over his crates of bones.

“I will want to have a secretary transcribe an entire account of your adventure,” said Cope. “We need to be able to prove that the bones we excavated in Montana are the bones that sit now in Philadelphia.”

“A few may have broken from the way the wagon and stages bounced around,” Johnson said. “Plus there may be a few bullet holes or bone chips, but mostly they’re all here.”

“The Brontosaurus teeth?” Cope asked, his hands twitching in excitement. “Do you still have the teeth? It may not reflect well on me, but I have been worrying about this since the day we thought you had been killed.”

“It’s this crate here, Professor,” Johnson said, finding the box with the X.

Cope unpacked it on the spot, lifted the teeth one by one, and stared at them for a very long time, transfixed. He set them down in a row, much as he had done on the shale cliff many weeks earlier, nearly two thousand miles to the west. “This is extraordinary,” he said. “Quite extraordinary. Marsh will be hard put to match it for many years.”

“Edward,” said Mrs. Cope, “hadn’t we better send Mr. Johnson home to his family?”

“Yes, of course,” Cope said. “They must be eager to see you.”

His father embraced him warmly. “I thank God for your return, son.”

His mother stood at the top of the stairs and said weepily, “The beard makes you look frightfully common, William. Get rid of it at once.”

“What’s happened to your lip?” his father said. “Are you wounded?”

“Indians,” Johnson said.

“Looks like teeth marks to me,” Edward, his brother, said.

“That’s so,” Johnson said. “This Indian climbed aboard the wagon and bit me. Wanted to see what I would taste like.”

“Bit you on the lip? What, was he trying to kiss you?”

“They are savages,” Johnson said. “And unpredictable.”

“Kissed by an Indian!” Edward said, clapping his hands. “Kissed by an Indian!”

Johnson rolled up his trousers and showed everyone the scar where the arrow had pierced his leg. He produced the stump of the arrow. He chose not to tell them many details, and said nothing of Emily Williams or Miranda Lapham or whatever her true name was. He did tell them about burying Toad and Little Wind.

Edward burst into tears and ran upstairs to his room.

“We’re just glad to have you back, son,” his father said, looking suddenly much older.

The fall term was already under way, but the dean of Yale College permitted him to enroll anyway. Johnson was not above the dramatic effect of putting on his Western clothes and his gun and striding into the dining room.

The entire room fell silent. Then someone said, “It’s Johnson! Willy Johnson!”

Johnson strode over to Marlin’s table. Marlin was eating with friends.

“I believe you owe me money,” Johnson said, in his best tough voice.

“How colorful you look,” Marlin said, laughing. “You must introduce me to your tailor, William.”

Johnson said nothing.

“Should I presume you had many dime Western adventures and killed men in actual gunfights?” Marlin said, hamming it up for their listeners.

“Yes,” Johnson said. “That would be correct.”

Marlin’s antic smile dropped, unsure of Johnson’s meaning.

“I believe you owe me money,” Johnson said again.

“My dear fellow, I owe you nothing at all! If you remember, the terms of our bet were that you would accompany Professor Marsh, and the entire school knows you did not get far with him before he cast you aside as a rogue and scoundrel.”

In a single swift movement, Johnson grabbed Marlin by the collar, effortlessly hoisted him to his feet, and slammed him against the wall. “You snotty little bastard, you give me that thousand dollars or I’ll break your head open.”

Marlin was gasping, and noticed Johnson’s scar. “I don’t know you.”

“No, but you owe me. Now tell everybody what you are going to do.”

“I’m going to pay you a thousand dollars.”

“Louder.”

Marlin repeated it loudly. The room laughed. Johnson dropped him in a crumpled heap to the floor and walked out of the dining room.

Othniel Marsh lived alone in a mansion he had built on a hill outside New Haven. As he walked up the hill, Johnson had a sense of the loneliness and isolation of Marsh’s life, his need for approval, for status and acceptance. He was shown to the drawing room; Marsh was working there alone, and looked up from a manuscript he was preparing.

“You sent for me, Professor Marsh?”

Marsh glared at him. “Where are they?”

“You mean the bones?”

“Of course I mean the bones! Where are they?”

Johnson held Marsh’s gaze. He realized he was no longer afraid of the man, in any way. “Professor Cope has the bones, in Philadelphia. All of them.”

“Is it true you have found the remains of a hitherto unknown dinosaur of great size?”

“I am not at liberty to say, Professor.”

“You are a fatuous fool,” Marsh said. “You have squandered your own opportunity for greatness. Cope will never publish, and if he does, his report will be so hasty, so filled with inaccuracies, that it will never attain the recognition of the scientific community. You should have brought them to Yale, where they could be properly studied. You are a fool and a traitor to your college, Johnson.”

“Is that all, Professor?”

“Yes, that’s all.” Johnson turned to leave. “One more thing,” Marsh said.

“Yes, Professor?”

“I don’t suppose you can get the bones back?”

“No, Professor.”

“Then it’s gone,” Marsh said wistfully. “All gone.” He returned to his manuscript. His pen scratched on the paper.

Johnson left the room. On his way out, he passed a small skeleton of the miniature Cretaceous horse Eohippus. It was beautifully formed, beautifully assembled, this pale skeleton from the distant past. Somehow it made Johnson sad. He turned away, and hurried down the hill toward the College.

Postscript

Cope

Edward Drinker Cope died penniless in 1897 in Philadelphia, having exhausted his family fortune and his energy battling Marsh. He was relatively young still, only fifty-six years old. But he had seen the first Brontosaurus skeleton assembled at the Yale Peabody Museum and more than fourteen hundred papers published. He is credited with the discovery and naming of more than one thousand vertebrate species and more than fifty kinds of dinosaurs. One, Anisonchus cophater, he said he named “in honor of the number of Cope haters who surround me!” He donated his body to science and instructed that after death his brain size be compared with Marsh’s, it being commonly believed at the time that brain size determined intelligence. Marsh declined to accept the challenge.

Marsh

Othniel Charles Marsh died two years after Cope, alone and embittered in the house he had built for himself. He was buried in the Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven, Connecticut. He and his fossil hunters discovered five-hundred-odd different fossilized animals, including some eighty dinosaurs; he named them all himself.

Earp

Wyatt Earp died on January 13, 1929, in a rented bungalow near the intersection of Venice and Crenshaw Boulevards in Los Angeles, after acting in silent movies and then selling the rights to his life story to Columbia Pictures. In later years he was strongly influenced by the wishes of his wife, Josie. He told his life story as he remembered it, or chose to remember it, to Stuart N. Lake, a Pasadena writer, two years before his death. When published as Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal, it made a terrific impression, and established his fame enduringly.

Sternberg

Charles Hazelius Sternberg became a celebrated American fossil collector and amateur paleontologist who wrote about his time with Cope. He was in fact working for Cope when Cope died, and learned of his death three days later, wired directly by his wife. Sternberg wrote two books: The Life of a Fossil Hunter (1909) and Hunting Dinosaurs in the Badlands of the Red Deer River, Alberta, Canada (1917). He was responsible for finding the Monoclonius, or, as it is commonly known, the horned dinosaur. He quoted Cope as saying, “No man can say he loves us, when he wantonly destroys our work; no man loves God who wantonly destroys his creatures.” Fossils collected by Sternberg are displayed in museums around the world.

Author’s Note

“Biography,” observed Oscar Wilde, “lends to death a new terror.” Even in a work of fiction about individuals long dead, there is reason to consider his sentiment.

Readers unfamiliar with this period of American history may be interested to know that Professors Marsh and Cope were real people, their rivalry and antagonism depicted here without exaggeration—in fact, it has been toned down, since the nineteenth century promoted a degree of ad hominem excess that is hard to believe now.

Cope did go to the Montana badlands in 1876, and discovered the teeth of Brontosaurus, essentially as recounted here.{1}

The antagonism between Cope and Marsh that played out over ten years is compressed here into a single summer, with some changes. Thus, it was Marsh who made the false skull for Cope to find, and so on. However, it is true that on many occasions the workers of Cope and Marsh fired on one another—with much more serious intent than suggested here.

The character of William Johnson is entirely fictitious. I would not read this novel as history. For history, read Charles Sternberg’s detailed account of Cope’s trip to the Montana badlands in The Life of a Fossil Hunter.

I am indebted to E. H. Colbert, the eminent paleontologist and curator of the American Museum of Natural History, for first bringing the story of Marsh and Cope to my attention; in his kind correspondence he suggested a novel about them; he also provided me with my first leads in his books.

Finally, readers who inspect photographic books, as I have done, should be extremely careful about the captions. There has emerged a new breed of photo book in which authentic pictures of the West are accompanied by bleak, elegiac prose. The captions may seem to fit the pictures, but they do not fit the facts—this sad, melancholy attitude is a complete anachronism. Towns such as Deadwood may look depressing to us now, but they were exciting places then, and the people who inhabited them were excited to be there. Too often, the people who write captions to photographs indulge their own uninformed fantasies about the pictures and what they mean.

All the events of 1876 occurred as reported here, except that Marsh did not lead a party of students west that year (he had gone every year for the previous six, but remained in New Haven in 1876 to meet the English biologist T. H. Huxley); that all of Cope’s bones traveled safely on the Missouri steamer, and no one continued on to Deadwood; and that Robert Louis Stevenson did not go west until 1879. The descriptions of the Indian Wars are accurate, sadly so, and from a vantage of some hundred-plus years later, it seems safe to say that the American West described in these pages, like the world of the dinosaurs long before, was soon to be forever lost.

Afterword

Michael’s dedication to his craft was endless: over the course of his forty-plus-year career, he wrote thirty-two books; his work inspired many films, and as a director, screenwriter, and producer himself, he created iconic movies and television programs. Not only was he always working on his next project, he was always working on his “next projects.” Michael was constantly reading, clipping interesting articles, amassing research for new work by looking to the past, observing the present, and thinking about our future. He loved to tell stories that blurred the lines between facts and what-if scenarios. You always came out of a Crichton novel, film, or television event smarter and wanting more. Because his work was so densely researched, you couldn’t help but believe that, yes, perhaps dinosaurs could be brought back to life through DNA found in a well-preserved mosquito or that nanobots could operate intelligently and independently and wreak havoc on their human creators and the environment.

His work is as relevant and engaging as ever, as demonstrated by the gigantic success of the Jurassic Park franchise, and in HBO’s reimagining of his classic film Westworld.

Honoring Michael’s legacy has been my mission ever since he passed away. Through the creation of his archives, I quickly realized that it was possible to trace the birth of Dragon Teeth to a 1974 letter to the curator of vertebrate paleontology of the American Museum of Natural History. After reading the manuscript, I could only describe Dragon Teeth as “pure Crichton.” It has Michael’s voice, and his love of history, research, and science all dynamically woven into this epic tale. Nearly forty years after Michael first hatched the idea for a novel about the excitement and the dangers of early paleontology, the story feels as fresh and fun today as it was to him then. Dragon Teeth was a very important book for Michael—it was a forerunner of his “other dinosaur story.” Its publication is a wonderful way to introduce Michael to new generations of readers around the world and is an absolute treat for longtime Crichton fans everywhere.

Publishing Dragon Teeth has been a labor of love, and I want to thank the following people for their assistance in this endeavor: my creative partner, Laurent Bouzereau; Jonathan Burnham, Jennifer Barth, and the team at Harper; Jennifer Joel and Sloan Harris of ICM Partners; the remarkable team at the Michael Crichton Archives; Michael S. Sherman and Page Jenkins; and, of course, our beloved son, John Michael Crichton (Jr.).

—Sherri Crichton

Bibliography

Barnett, Leroy. “Ghastly Harvest: Montana’s Trade in Buffalo Bones.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History, vol. 25, no. 3 (Summer 1975): 2–13.

Barton, D. R. “Middlemen of the Dinosaur Resurrection: The ‘Jimmy Valentines’ of Science.” Natural History (May 1938): 385–87.

———. “The Story of a Pioneer ‘Bone-Setter.’” Natural History (March 1938): 224–27.

Colbert, Edwin H. “Battle of the Bones. Cope & Marsh, the Paleontological Antagonists.” Geo Times, vol. 2, no. 4 (October 1957): 6–7, 14.

———. Men and Dinosaurs: The Search in Field and Laboratory. New York: Dutton, 1968.

———. Dinosaurs: Their Discovery and Their World. New York: Dutton, 1961.

Connell, Evan. Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Big Horn. Berkeley, California: North Point Press, 1984.

Dippie, Brian W. “Bold but Wasting Race: Stereotypes and American Indian Policy.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History, vol. 25, no. 3 (Summer 1975): 2–13.

Eiseley, Loren. The Immense Journey: An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature. New York: Vintage Books, 1959.

Fisher, David. “The Time They Postponed Doomsday.” New Scientist (June 1985): 39–43.

Grinnell, George Bird. “An Old-Time Bone Hunt.” Natural History (July–August 1923): 329–36.

Hanson, Stephen and Patricia Hanson. “The Last Days of Wyatt Earp.” Los Angeles Magazine (March 1985): 118–26.

Howard, Robert West. The Dawnseekers: The First History of American Paleontology. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975.

Jeffery, David. “Fossils: Annals of Life Written in Rock.” National Geographic, vol. 168, no. 2 (August 1985): 182–91.

Josephson, Matthew. The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists 1861–1901. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1934.

Lake, Stuart. Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1931.

Lanham, Url. The Bone Hunters. New York: Columbia University Press, 1973.

Marsh, Othniel Charles. “The Dinosaurs of North America.” Annual Report of U.S. Geological Survey (January 1896).

Matthew, W. D. “Early Days of Fossil Hunting in the High Plains.” Natural History (September–October 1926): 449–54.

Mountfield, David. The Railway Barons. New York: W. W. Norton, 1979.

Nield, Ted. “Sticks, Stones and Broken Bones.” New Scientist (December 1985): 64–67.

O’Connor, Richard. Iron Wheels and Broken Men. New York: Putnam, 1973.

Osborn, Henry Fairfield. Cope: Master Naturalist: The Life and Letters of Edward Drinker Cope. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1931.

Ostrom, John H. and J. S. McIntosh. Marsh’s Dinosaurs. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1966.

Parker, Watson. Gold in the Black Hills. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966.

Plate, Robert. The Dinosaur Hunters: Othniel C. Marsh and Edward D. Cope. New York: D. McKay Co., 1964.

Reinhardt, Richard. Out West on the Overland Train. New Jersey: Castle Books, 1967.

Rice, Larry. “Badlands.” Adventure Travel (July–August 1981): 38–44.

———. “The Great Northern Plains.” Backpacker (May 1986): 48–52.

Romer, A. S. “Cope Versus Marsh.” Systemic Zoology, vol. 13, no. 4 (1964): 201–7.

Scott, Douglas D. and Melissa A. Connor. “Post-mortem at the Little Bighorn.” Natural History (June 1986): 46–55.

Shor, Betty. The Fossil Feud Between E. D. Cope and O. C. Marsh. Hicksville, New York: Exposition Press, 1974.

Stein, Ross S. and Robert C. Bucknam. “Quake Replay in the Great Basin.” Natural History (June 1986): 28–36.

Sternberg, Charles H. The Life of a Fossil Hunter. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1909.

Taft, Robert. Photography and the American Scene. New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1964.

West, Linda and Dan Chure. Dinosaur: The Dinosaur National Monument Quarry. Jensen, Utah: Dinosaur Nature Association, 1984.

Wolf, Daniel. The American Space. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1983.

Back Matter

About the Author

Michael Crichton (1942–2008) was the author of the groundbreaking novels The Andromeda Strain, The Great Train Robbery, Jurassic Park, Disclosure, Prey, State of Fear, and Next, among many others. His books have sold more than 200 million copies worldwide, have been translated into thirty-eight languages, and have provided the basis for fifteen feature films. He was the director of Westworld, Coma, The Great Train Robbery, and Looker, as well as the creator of ER. Crichton remains the only writer to have a number one book, movie, and TV show in the same year.

Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

Also by Michael Crichton

Fiction

The Andromeda Strain

The Terminal Man

The Great Train Robbery

Eaters of the Dead

Congo

Sphere

Jurassic Park

Rising Sun

Disclosure

The Lost World

Airframe

Timeline

Nonfiction

Five Patients

Jasper Johns

Electronic Life

Travels

Publisher Details

This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

dragon teeth. 2017 by CrichtonSun LLC. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

first edition

Illustrations: Shutterstock

Cover design and illustration by Will Staehle

Digital Edition MAY 2017 ISBN: 9780062473370

Print ISBN: 978-0-06-247335-6

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Jurassic Park

The Lost World

{1} Editor’s note: Charles H. Sternberg attributed this discovery to Cope in his 1909 memoir, The Life of a Fossil Hunter. Others have credited the discovery of the Brontosaurus to Marsh.

Michael Crichton

Jurassic Park Series

Jurassic Park: A Novel

Front Matter

Praise for the book

Title Page

Publisher Details

Contents

Dedication

Epigraph

Map

INTRODUCTION

PROLOGUE: THE BITE OF THE RAPTOR

FIRST ITERATION

ALMOST PARADISE

PUNTARENAS

THE BEACH

NEW YORK

THE SHAPE OF THE DATA

SECOND ITERATION

THE SHORE OF THE INLAND SEA

SKELETON

COWAN, SWAIN AND ROSS

PLANS

HAMMOND

CHOTEAU

TARGET OF OPPORTUNITY

AIRPORT

MALCOLM

ISLA NUBLAR

WELCOME

THIRD ITERATION

JURASSIC PARK

WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH

THE TOUR

CONTROL

VERSION 4.4

CONTROL

THE TOUR

CONTROL

BIG REX

CONTROL

STEGOSAUR

CONTROL

BREEDING SITES

FOURTH ITERATION

THE MAIN ROAD

RETURN

NEDRY

BUNGALOW

TIM

LEX

CONTROL

THE ROAD

CONTROL

IN THE PARK

CONTROL

THE PARK

DAWN

THE PARK

FIFTH ITERATION

SEARCH

AVIARY

TYRANNOSAUR

CONTROL

SIXTH ITERATION

RETURN

THE GRID

LODGE

CONTROL

SEVENTH ITERATION

DESTROYING THE WORLD

UNDER CONTROL

ALMOST PARADIGM

DESCENT

HAMMOND

THE BEACH

APPROACHING DARK

EPILOGUE: SAN JOSÉ

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THE SHORE OF THE INLAND
SEA

WHEN DINOSAURS RULED
THE EARTH

Prologue:
“Life at the Edge of Chaos”