Jurassic Park: A Novel (50 page)

“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:
LV
2–4. 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!”

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
.