Jurassic Park

  “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 yo
u 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 p
reserved 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.”