Jurassic Park

  The behavior of the dinosaurs had always been a minor consideration for Wu. And rightly so: behavior was a second-order effect of DNA, like protein enfolding. You couldn’t really predict behavior, and you couldn’t really control it, except in very crude ways, like making an animal dependent on a dietary substance by withholding an enzyme. But, in general, behavioral effects were simply beyond the reach of understanding. You couldn’t look at a DNA sequence and predict behavior. It was impossible.

  And that had made Wu’s DNA work purely empirical. It was a matter of tinkering, the way a modem workman might repair an antique grandfather clock. You were dealing with something out of the past, something constructed of ancient materials and following ancient rules. You couldn’t be certain why it worked as it did; and it had been repaired and modified many times already, by forces of evolution, over eons of time. So, like the workman who makes an adjustment and then sees if the clock runs any better, Wu would make an adjustment and then see if the animals behaved any better. And he only tried to correct gross behavior: uncontrolled butting of the electrical fences, or rubbing the skin raw on tree trunks. Those were the behaviors that sent him back to the drawing board.

  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 th
e 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 happen
ed?” 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.