The Lost World (18 page)

T
hey came running across the clearing, shouting, "Dr. Levine! Dr. Levine! You're safe!" They hugged Levine, who smiled despite himself. He turned to Thorne.

"Doc," Levine said. "This was very unwise."

"Why don't you explain that to them?" Thorne said. "They're your students."

Kelly said, "Don't be mad, Dr. Levine."

"It was our decision," Arby explained to Levine. "We came on our own."

"On your own?" Levine said.

"We thought you'd need help," Arby said. "And you did. He turned to Thorne.

Thorne nodded. "Yes. They've helped us."

"And we promise, we won't get in the way," Kelly said. "You go ahead and do whatever you have to do, and we will just - "

"The kids were worried about you," Malcolm said, coming up to Levine. "Because they thought you were in trouble."

"Anyway, what's the big rush?" Eddie said. "I mean, you build all these vehicles, and then you leave without them - "

"I had no choice," Levine said. "The government has an outbreak of some new encephalitis on its hands. They've decided it's related to the occasional dinosaur carcass that washes up there. Of course, the whole idea is idiotic, but that won't stop them from destroying every animal on this island the minute they find out about it. I had to get here first. Time is short."

"So you came here alone," Malcolm said.

"Nonsense, Ian. Stop pouting. I was going to call you, as soon as I verified this was the island. And I didn't come here alone. I had a guide named Diego, a local man who swore he had been on this island as a kid, years before. And he seemed entirely knowledgeable. He led me up the cliff without any problem. And everything was going just fine, until we were attacked at the stream, and Diego - "

"Attacked?" Malcolm said. "By what?"

"I didn't really see what it was," Levine said. "It happened extremely fast. The animal knocked me down, and tore the backpack, and I don't really know what happened after that. Possibly the shape of my pack confused it, because I got up and started running again, and it didn't chase me."

Malcolm was staring at him. "You were damn lucky, Richard."

"Yes, well, I ran for a long time. When I looked back, I was alone in the jungle. And lost. I didn't know what to do, so I climbed a tree. That seemed like a good idea - and then, around nightfall, the velociraptors showed up."

"Velociraptors?" Arby said.

"Small carnivores," Levine said. "Basic theropod body shape, long snout, binocular vision. Roughly two meters tall, weighing perhaps ninety kilos. Very fast, intelligent, nasty little dinosaurs, and they travel in packs. And last night there were eight of them, jumping all around my tree, trying to get to me. All night long, jumping and snarling, jumping and snarling…I didn't get any sleep at all."

"Aw, that's a shame," Eddie said.

"Look," Levine said crossly. "It's not my problem if - "

Thorne said "You spent the night in the tree?"

Yes, and in the morning the raptors had gone. So I came down and started looking around. I found the lab, or whatever it is. Clearly, they abandoned it in a hurry, leaving some animals behind. I went through the building, and discovered that there is still power - some systems are still going, all these years later. And, most important, there is a network of security cameras. That's a very lucky break. So I decided to check on those cameras, and I was hard at work when you people barged in - "

"Wait a minute," Eddie said, "We came here to rescue you."

"I don't know why," Levine said. "I certainly never asked you to."

Thorne said, "it sounded like you did, over the phone."

"That is a misunderstanding," Levine said. "I was momentarily upset, because I couldn't work the phone. You've made that phone too complicated, Doc. That's the problem. So: shall we get started?"

Levine paused. He looked at the angry faces all around him. Malcolm turned to Thorne. "A great scientist," he said, "and a great human being."

"Look," Levine said, "I don't know what your problem is. The expedition was going to come to this island sooner or later. In this instance, sooner is better. Everything has turned out quite well, and, frankly, I don't see any reason to discuss it further. This is not the time for petty bickering. We have important things to do - and I think we should get started. Because this island is an extraordinary opportunity, and it isn't going to last forever.

L
ewis Dodgson sat hunched in a dark corner of the Chesperito Cantina in Puerto Cortes, nursing a beer. Beside him, George Baselton, the Regis Professor of Biology at Stanford, was enthusiastically devouring a plate of huevos rancheros. The egg yolks ran yellow across green salsa. It made Dodgson sick just to look at it. He turned away, but he could still hear Baselton licking his lips, noisily.

There was no one else in the bar, except for some chickens clucking around the floor. Every so often, a young boy would come to the door, throw a handful of rocks at the chickens, and run away again, giggling. A scratchy stereo played an old Elvis Presley tape through corroded speakers above the bar. Dodgson hummed "Falling in Love With You," and tried to control his temper. He had been sitting in this dump for damn near an hour.

Baselton finished his eggs, and pushed the plate away. He brought out the small notebook he carried everywhere with him. "Now Lew," he said. "I've been thinking about how to handle this."

"Handle what?" Dodgson said irritably. "There's nothing to handle, unless we can get to that island." While he spoke, he tapped a small photograph of Richard Levine on the edge of the bar table. Turned it over. Looked at the image upside down. Then right side up.

He sighed. He looked at his watch.

"Lew," Baselton said patiently, "getting to the island is not the important part. The important part is how we present our discovery to the world."

Dodgson paused. "Our discovery," he repeated. "I like that, George. That's very good. Our discovery."

"Well, that's the truth, isn't it?" Baselton said, with a bland smile. "InGen is bankrupt, its technology lost to mankind. A tragic, tragic loss, as I have said many times on television. But under the circumstances, anyone who finds it again has made a discovery. I don't know what else you would call it. As Henri Poincare put it - "

"Okay," Dodgson said. "So we make a discovery. And then what? Hold a press conference?"

"Absolutely not," Baselton said, looking horrified. "A press conference would appear extremely crass. It would open us up to all sorts of criticism. No, no. A discovery of this magnitude must be treated with decorum. It must be reported, Lew."

"Reported?"

"In the literature: Nature, I imagine. Yes."

Dodgson squinted. "You want to announce this in an academic publication?"

"What better way to make it legitimate?" Baselton said. "It's entirely proper to present our findings to our scholarly peers. Of course it will start a debate - but what will that debate consist of? An academic squabble, professors sniping at professors, which will fill the science pages of the newspapers for three days, until it is pushed aside by the latest news on breast implants. And in those three days, we will have staked our claim."

"You'll write it?"

"Yes," Baselton said. "And later, I think, an article in American Scholar, or perhaps Natural History. A human-interest piece, what this discovery means for the future, what it tells us about the past, all that…"

Dodgson nodded. He could see that Baselton was correct, and he was reminded once again how much he needed him, and how wise he had been to add him to the team. Dodgson never thought about public reaction. And Baselton thought about nothing else.

"Well, that's fine," Dodgson said. "But none of it matters, unless we get to that island." He glanced at his watch again.

He heard a door open behind him, and Dodgson's assistant Howard King came in, pulling a heavyset Costa Rican man, with a mustache. The man had a weathered face and a sullen expression.

Dodgson turned on his stool. "Is this the guy?"

"Yes, Lew."

"What's his name?"

"Gandoca."

"Senor Gandoca." Dodgson held up the photo of Levine. "You know this man?"

Gandoca hardly glanced at the photo. He nodded. "Si. Senor Levine."

"That's right. Senor flicking Levine. When was he here?"

"A few days ago. He left with Dieguito, my cousin. They are not back yet."

"And where did they go?" Dodgson asked.

"Isla Sorna."

"Good." Dodgson drained his beer, pushed the bottle away. "You have a boat?" He turned to King. "Does he have a boat?"

King said, "He's a fisherman. He has a boat."

Gandoca nodded. "A fishing boat. Si."

"Good. I want to go to Isla Sorna, too."

"Si, senor, but today the weather - "

"I don't care about the weather," Dodgson said. "The weather will get better. I want to go now."

"Perhaps later - "

"Now."

Gandoca spread his hands. "I am very sorry, senor - "

Dodgson said, "Show him the money, Howard."

King opened a briefcase. It was filled with five thousand colon notes. Gatidoca looked, picked up one of the bills, inspected it. He put it back carefully, shifted on his feet a little.

Dodgson said, "I want to go now."

"Si, senor," Gandoca said. "We leave when you are ready."

"That's more like it," Dodgson said. "How long to get to the island?"

"Perhaps two hours, senor."

"Fine," Dodgson said. "That'll be fine."

"
Here we go!"

There was a click as Levine connected the flexible cable to the Explorer's power winch, and flicked it on. The cable turned slowly in the sunlight.

They had all moved down onto the broad grassy plain at the base of the cliff. The midday sun was high overhead, glaring off the rocky rim of the island. Below, the valley shimmered in midday heat.

There was a herd of hypsilophodons a short distance away; the green gazelle-like animals raised their heads occasionally above the grass to look toward them, every time they heard the clink of metal, as Eddie and the kids laid out the aluminum strut assembly which had been the subject of so much speculation back in California. That assembly now looked like a jumble of thin struts - an oversized version of pickup sticks - lying in the grass of the plain.

"Now we will see," Levine said, rubbing his hands together.

As the motor turned, the aluminum struts began to move, and slowly lifted into the air. The emerging structure appeared spidery and delicate, but Thorne knew that the cross-bracing would give it surprising strength. Struts unfolding, the structure rose ten feet, then fifteen feet, and finally it stopped. The little house at the top was now just beneath the lowest branches of the nearby trees, which almost concealed it from view. But the scaffolding itself gleamed bright and shiny in the sun.

"Is that it?" Arby said.

"That's it, yes." Thorne walked around the four sides, slipping in the locking pins, to hold it upright.

"But it's much too shiny," Levine said. "We should have made it matte black."

Thorne said, "Eddie, we need to hide this."

"Want to spray it, Doc? I think I brought some black paint."

Levine shook his head. "No, then it'll smell. How about those palms?

"Sure, we can do that." Eddie walked to a stand of nearby palms, and began to hack away big fronds with his machete.

Kelly stared up at the aluminum strut assembly. "It's great," she said. "But what is it?"

"It's a high hide," Levine said. "Come on." And he began to climb the scaffolding.

The structure at the top was a little house, its roof supported by aluminum bars spaced four feet apart. The floor of the house was also made of aluminum bars, but these were closer together, about six inches apart. Their feet threatened to slip through, so Levine took the first of the bundles of fronds that Eddie Carr was raising on a rope, and used them to make a more complete floor. The remaining fronds he tied to the outside of the house, concealing its structure.

Arby and Kelly stared out at the animals. From their vantage point, they could look across the whole valley. There was a distant herd of apatosaurs, on the other side of the river. A cluster of triceratops browsed to the north. Nearer the water, some duck-billed dinosaurs with long crests rising above their heads moved forward to drink. A low, trumpeting cry from the duckbills floated across the valley toward them: a deep, unearthly sound. A moment later, there was an answering cry, from the forest at the opposite side of the valley.

"What was that?" Kelly said.

"Parasaurolophus," Levine said. "It's trumpeting through its nuchal crest. Low-frequency sound carries a long distance."

To, the south, there was a herd of dark-green animals, with large curved protruding foreheads, and a rim of small knobby horns. They looked a little like buffalo. "What do you call those?" Kelly said.

"Good question," Levine said. "They are either Gravitholus albertae, or more likely Pachycephalosaurus wyomingensis. But it's difficult to say for sure, because a full skeleton for these animals has never been recovered. Their foreheads are very thick bone, so we've found many domed cranial fragments. But this is the first time I've ever seen the whole animal."

"And those heads? What are they for?" Arby said.

"Nobody knows," Levine said. "Everyone has assumed they're used for butting, for intraspecies fighting among males. Competition for females, that sort of thing."

Malcolm climbed up into the hide. "Yes, butting heads, he said sourly. "Just as you see them now."

"All right," Levine said, "so they're not butting heads at the moment. Perhaps their breeding season is concluded."

"Or perhaps they don't do it at all," Malcolm said, staring at the green animals. "They look pretty peaceful to me."

"Yes," Levine said," but of course that doesn't mean a thing. African buffalo appear peaceful most of the time too - in fact, they usually just stand motonless. Yet they're unpredictable and dangerous animals. We have to presume those domes exist for a reason - even if we're not seeing it now."

Levine turned to the kids. "That's why we made this structure. We want to make round-the-clock observations on the animals," he said. "To the extent possible, we want a full record of their activities."

"Why?" Arby said.

"Because," Malcolm said, "this island presents a unique opportunity to study the greatest mystery in the history of our planet: extinction."

"You see," Malcolm said, "when InGen shut down their facility, they did it hastily, and they left some live animals behind. That was five or six years ago. Dinosaurs mature rapidly; most species attain adulthood in four or five years. By now, the first generation of InGen dinosaurs - bred in a laboratory - has attained maturity, and has begun to breed a new generation, entirely in the wild. There is now a complete ecological system on this island, with a dozen or so dinosaur species living in social groups, for the first time in sixty-five million years."

Arby said, "So why is that an opportunity?"

Malcolm pointed across the plain. "Well, think about it. Extinction is a very difficult research topic. There are dozens of competing theories. The fossil record is incomplete. And you can't perform experiments. Galileo could climb the tower of Pisa and drop balls to test his theory of gravity. He never actually did it, but he could have. Newton used prisms to test his theory of light. Astronomers observed eclipses to test Einstein's theory of relativity. Testing occurs throughout science. But how can you test a theory of extinction? You can't."

Arby said, "But here…"

"Yes," Malcolm said. "What we have here is a population of extinct animals artificially introduced into a closed environment, and allowed to evolve all over again. There's never been anything like it in all history. We already know these animals became extinct once. But nobody knows why."

"And you expect to find out? In a few days?"

"Yes," Malcolm said. "We do."

"How? You don't expect them to become extinct again, do you?"

"You mean, right before our eyes?" Malcolm laughed. "No, no. Nothing like that. But the point is, for the first time we aren't just studying bones. We're seeing live animals, and observing their behavior. I have a theory, and I think that even in a short time, we will see evidence for that theory."

"What evidence?" Kelly said.

"What theory?" Arby said.

Malcolm smiled at them. "Wait," he said.