Jurassic Park (51 page)

    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.

Total Animals                       292____________________________________                                                                                     

      Species                 Expected                Found             Ver

Tyrannosaurs                              2                 1                 4.1

 Maiasaurs                          22                20                ??

 Stegosaurs                         4                 1                 3.9

 Triceratops                              8                 6                 3.1

 Procompsognathids                        65                64                ??

 Othnielia                          23                15                3.1

 Velociraptors                            37                27                ??

 Apatosaurs                         17                12                3.1

 Hadrosaurs                         11                5                 3.1

 Dilophosaurs                             7                 4                 4.3

 Pterosaurs                         6                 5                 4.3

 Hypsilophodontids                        34                14                ??

 Euoplocepbalids                    16                9                 4.0

 Styracosaurs                             18                7                 3.9

 Callovosaurs                             22                13                4.1

      Total                         292               203

   "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 equilibriums 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 lumped 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 bhd 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 shock 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 het he'll let me put it on him," she said.

    "I wouldn't try," Muldoon said. "They're unpredictable."

    "I het 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 bands. 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. "Not much about nesting behavior is clear," he said. He found himself explaining about the modern reptiles, like crocodiles and alligators. Even their nesting behavior wasn't well understood. Actually, the American alligator was better studied than most, and in the case of alligators, only the female guarded the nest, and only until the time of birth. The male alligator had spent days in early spring lying beside the female in a mating pair, blowing bubbles on her checks and providing her with other signs of masculine attention designed to bring her to receptivity, causing her finally to lift her tail and allow him, as he lay beside her, to insert his penis. By the time the female built her nest, two months later, the male was long gone. And although the female guarded her cone-shaped, three-foot-high mud nest ferociously, her attention seemed to wane with time, and she generally abandoned her eggs by the time the hatchlings began to squeak and emerge from their shells. Thus, in the wild, a baby alligator began its life entirely on its own, and for that reason its belly was stuffed with egg yolk for nourishment in its early days.