“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.