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“It is?”
“Yes. Based on what Dr. Wu told us earlier, one should never see a population graph like that.”
“Why not?” Gennaro said.
“Because that is a graph for a normal biological population. Which is precisely what Jurassic Park is not. Jurassic Park is not the real world. It is intended to be a controlled world that only imitates the natural world. In that sense, it's a true park, rather like a Japanese formal garden. Nature manipulated to be more natural than the real thing, if you will.”
“I'm afraid you've lost me,” Gennaro said, looking annoyed.
“I'm sure the tour will make everything clear,” Malcolm said.
The Tour
“This way, everybody, this way,” Ed Regis said. By his side, a woman was passing out pith helmets with “Jurassic Park” labeled on the headband, and a little blue dinosaur logo.
A line of Toyota Land Cruisers came out of an underground garage beneath the visitor center. Each car pulled up, driverless and silent. Two black men in safari uniforms were opening the doors for passengers.
“Two to four passengers to a car, please, two to four passengers to a car,” a recorded voice was saying. “Children under ten must be accompanied by an adult. Two to four passengers to a car, please...”
Tim watched as Grant, Sattler, and Malcolm got into the first Land Cruiser with the lawyer, Gennaro. Tim looked over at Lex, who was standing pounding her fist into her glove.
Tim pointed to the first car and said, “Can I go with them?”
“I'm afraid they have things to discuss,” Ed Regis said. “Technical things.”
“I'm interested in technical things,” Tim said. “I'd rather go with them.”
“Well, you'll be able to hear what they're saying,” Regis said. “We'll have a radio open between the cars.”
The second car came. Tim and Lex got in, and Ed Regis followed. “These are electric cars,” Regis said. “Guided by a cable in the roadway.”
Tim was glad he was sitting in the front seat, because mounted in the dashboard were two computer Screens and a box that looked to him like a CD-ROM; that was a laser disk player controlled by a computer. There was also a portable walkie-talkie and some kind of a radio transmitter. There were two antennas on the roof, and some odd goggles in the map pocket.
The black men shut the doors of the Land Cruiser. The car started off with an electric hum. Up ahead, the three scientists and Gennaro were talking and pointing, clearly excited. Ed Regis said, “Let's hear what they are saying.” An intercom clicked.
“I don't know what the hell you think you're doing here,” Gennaro said, over the intercom. He sounded very angry.
“I know quite well why I'm here,” Malcolm said.
“You're here to advise me, not play goddamned mind games. I've got five percent of this company and a responsibility to make sure that Hammond has done his job responsibly. Now you goddamn come here-”
Ed Regis pressed the intercom button and said, “In keeping with the nonpolluting policies of Jurassic Park, these lightweight electric Land Cruisers have been specially built for us by Toyota in Osaka. Eventually we hope to drive among the animals-just as they do in African game parks-but, for now, sit back and enjoy the self-guided tour.” He paused. “And, by the way, we can hear you back here.”
“Oh Christ,” Gennaro said. “I have to be able to speak freely. I didn't ask for these damned kids to come-”
Ed Regis smiled blandly and pushed a button. “We'll just begin the show, shall we?” They heard a fanfare of trumpets, and the interior screens flashed WELCOME TO JURASSIC PARK. A sonorous voice said, “Welcome to Jurassic Park. You are now entering the lost world of the prehistoric past, a world of mighty creatures long gone from the face of the earth, which you are privileged to see for the first time.”
“That's Richard Kiley,” Ed Regis said. “We spared no expense.”
The Land Cruiser passed through a grove of low, stumpy palm trees. Richard Kiley was saying, “Notice, first of all, the remarkable plant life that surrounds you. Those trees to your left and right are called cycads, the prehistoric predecessors of palm trees. Cycads were a favorite food of the dinosaurs. You can also see bennettitaleans, and ginkgoes. The world of the dinosaur included more modern plants, such as pine and fir trees, and swamp cypresses. You will see these as well.”
The Land Cruiser moved slowly among the foliage. Tim noticed the fences and retaining walls were screened by greenery to heighten the illusion of moving through real jungle.
“We imagine the world of the dinosaurs,” said Richard Kiley's voice, “as a world of huge vegetarians, eating their way through the giant swampy forests of the Jurassic and Cretaceous world, a hundred million years ago. But most dinosaurs were not as large as people think. The smallest dinosaurs were no bigger than a house cat, and the average dinosaur was about as big as a pony. We are first going to visit one of these average-size animals, called hypsilophodonts. If you look to your left, you may catch a glimpse of them now.”
They all looked to the left.
The Land Cruiser stopped on a low rise, where a break in the foliage provided a view to the east. They could see a sloping forested area which opened into a field of yellow grass that was about three feet high. There were no dinosaurs.
“Where are they?” Lex said.
Tim looked at the dashboard. The transmitter lights blinked and the CD-ROM whirred. Obviously the disk was being accessed by some automatic system. He guessed that the same motion sensors that tracked the animals also controlled the screens in the Land Cruiser. The screens now showed pictures of hypsilophodonts, and printed out data about them.
The voice said, “Hypsilophodontids are the gazelles of the dinosaur world: small, quick animals that once roamed everywhere in the world, from England to Central Asia to North America. We think these dinosaurs were so successful because they had better jaws and teeth for chewing plants than their contemporaries did. In fact, the name 'hypsilophodontid' means 'high-ridge tooth,' which refers to the characteristic self-sharpening teeth of these animals. You can see them in the plains directly ahead, and also perhaps in the branches of the trees.”
“In the trees?” Lex said. “Dinosaurs in the trees?”
Tim was scanning with binoculars, too. “To the right,” he said. “Halfway up that big green trunk...”
In the dappled shadows of the tree a motionless, dark green animal about the size of a baboon stood on a branch. It looked like a lizard standing on its hind legs. It balanced itself with a long drooping tail.
“That's an othnielia,” Tim said.
“The small animals you see are called othnielia,” the voice said, “in honor of the nineteenth-century dinosaur hunter Othniel Marsh of Yale.”
Tim spotted two more animals, on higher branches of the same tree. They were all about the same size. None of them were moving.
“Pretty boring,” Lex said. “They're not doing anything.”
“The main herd of animals can be found in the grassy plain below you,” said the voice. “We can rouse them with a simple mating call.” A loudspeaker by the fence gave a long nasal call, like the honking of geese.
From the field of grass directly to their left, six lizard heads poked up, one after another. The effect was comical, and Tim laughed.
The heads disappeared. The loudspeaker gave the call again, and once again the heads poked up-in exactly the same way, one after another. The fixed repetition of the behavior was striking.
“Hypsilophodonts are not especially bright animals,” the voice explained. “They have roughly the intelligence of a domestic cow.”
The heads were dull green, with a mottling of dark browns and blacks that extended down the slender necks. Judging from the size of the heads, Tim guessed their bodies were four feet long, about as large as deer.
Some of the hypsilophodonts were chewing, the jaws working. One reached up and scratched its head, with a five-fingered band. The gesture gave the creature a pensive, thoughtful quality.
“If you see them scratching, that is because they have skin problems. The veterinary scientists here at Jurassic Park think it may be a fungus, or an allergy. But they're not sure yet. After all, these are the first dinosaurs in history ever to be studied alive.”
The electric motor of the car started, and there was a grinding of gears. At the unexpected sound, the herd of hypsilophodonts suddenly leapt into the air and bounded above the grass like kangaroos, showing their full bodies with massive hind limbs and long tails in the afternoon sunlight. In a few leaps, they were gone.
“Now that we've had a look at these fascinating herbivores, we will go on to some dinosaurs that are a little larger. Quite a bit larger, in fact.”
The Land Cruisers continued onward, moving south through Jurassic Park.
Control
“Gears are grinding,” John Arnold said, in the darkened control room. “Have maintenance check the electric clutches on vehicles BB4 and BB5 when they come back.”
“Yes, Mr. Arnold,” replied the voice on the intercom.
“A minor detail,” Hammond said, walking in the room. Looking out, he could see the two Land Cruisers moving south through the park. Muldoon stood in the corner, silently watching.
Arnold pushed his chair back from the central console at the control panel. “There are no minor details, Mr. Hammond,” he said, and he lit another cigarette. Nervous at most times, Arnold was especially edgy now. He was only too aware that this was the first time visitors had actually toured the park. In fact, Arnold's team didn't often go into the park. Harding, the vet, sometimes did. The animal handlers went to the individual feeding houses. But otherwise they watched the park from the control room. And now, with visitors out there, he worried about a hundred details.
John Arnold was a systems engineer who had worked on the Polaris submarine missile in the late 1960s, until he had his first child and the prospect of making weapons became too distasteful. Meanwhile, Disney had started to create amusement park rides of great technological sophistication, and they employed a lot of aerospace people. Arnold helped build Disney World in Orlando, and had gone on to implement major Parks at Magic Mountain in California, Old Country in Virginia, and Astroworld in Houston.
His continuous employment at parks had eventually given him a somewhat skewed view of reality. Arnold contended, only half jokingly, that the entire world was increasingly described by the metaphor of the theme park. “Paris is a theme park,” he once announced, after a vacation, “although it's too expensive, and the park employees are unpleasant and sullen.”
For the past two years, Arnold's job had been to get Jurassic Park up and running. As an engineer, he was accustomed to long time schedules-he often referred to “the September opening,” by which he meant September of the following year-and as the September opening approached, he was unhappy with the progress that had been made. He knew from experience that it sometimes took years to work the bugs out of a single park ride-let alone get a whole park running properly.
“You're just a worrier,” Hammond said.
“I don't think so,” Arnold said. “You've got to realize that, from an engineering standpoint, Jurassic Park is by far the most ambitious theme park in history. Visitors will never think about it, but I do.”
He ticked the points off on his fingers.
"First, Jurassic Park has all the problems of any amusement park-ride maintenance, queue control, transportation, food handling, living accommodations, trash disposal, security.
"Second, we have all the problems of a major zoo-care of the animals; health and welfare; feeding and cleanliness; protection from insects, pests, allergies, and illnesses- maintenance of barriers; and all the rest.
“And, finally, we have the unprecedented problems of caring for a population of animals that no one has ever tried to maintain before.”
“Oh, it's not as bad as all that,” Hammond said.
“Yes, it is. You're just not here to see it,” Arnold said. “The tyrannosaurs drink the lagoon water and sometimes get sick; we aren't sure why. The triceratops females kill each other in fights for dominance and have to be separated into groups smaller than six. We don't know why. The stegosaurs frequently get blisters on their tongues and diarrhea, for reasons no one yet understands, even though we've lost two. Hypsilophodonts get skin rashes. And the veloctraptors-”
“Let's not start on the velociraptors,” Hammond said. “I'm sick of hearing about the velociraptors. How they're the most vicious creatures anyone has ever seen.”
“They are,” Muldoon said, in a low voice. “They should all be destroyed.”
“You wanted to fit them with radio collars,” Hammond said. “And I agreed.”
“Yes. And they promptly chewed the collars off. But even if the raptors never get free,” Arnold said, “I think we have to accept that Jurassic Park is inherently hazardous.”
“Oh balls, ” Hammond said. "Whose side are you on, anyway?
“We now have fifteen species of extinct animals, and most of them are dangerous,” Arnold said. “We've been forced to delay the jungle River Ride because of the dilophosaurs; and the Pteratops Lodge in the aviary, because the pterodactyls are so unpredictable. These aren't engineering delays, Mr. Hammond. They're problems with control of the animals.”
“You've had plenty of engineering delays,” Hammond said. “Don't blame it on the animals.”
“Yes, we have. In fact, it's all we could do to get the main attraction, Park Drive, working correctly, to get the CD-ROMs inside the cars to be controlled by the motion sensors. It's taken weeks of adjustment to get that working properly-and now the electric gearshifts on the cars are acting up! The gearshifts!”
“Let's keep it in perspective,” Hammond said. “You get the engineering correct and the animals will fall into place. After all, they're trainable.”
From the beginning, this had been one of the core beliefs of the planners. The animals, however exotic, would fundamentally behave like animals in zoos anywhere. They would learn the regularities of their care, and they would respond.
“Meanwhile, how's the computer?” Hammond said. He glanced at Dennis Nedry, who was working at a terminal in the corner of the room. “This damn computer has always been a headache.”
“We're getting there,” Nedry said.
“If you had done it right in the first place,” Hammond began, but Arnold put a restraining band on his arm. Arnold knew there was no point in antagonizing Nedry while he was working.
“It's a large system,” Arnold said. “There are bound to be glitches.”
In fact, the bug list now ran to more than 130 items, and included many odd aspects. For example:
The animal-feeding program reset itself every twelve hours, not every twenty-four hours, and would not record feedings on Sundays. As a result, the staff could not accurately measure how much the animals were eating.
The security system, which controlled all the security-card-operated doors, cut out whenever main power was lost, and did not come back on with auxiliary power. The security Program only ran with main power.
The physical conservation program, intended to dim lights after 10:00 p.m., only worked on alternate days of the week.
The automated fecal analysis (called Auto Poop), designed to check for parasites in the animal stools, invariably recorded all specimens as having the parasite Phagostomum venulosum, although none did. The program then automatically dispensed medication into the animals' food. If the handlers dumped the medicine out of the hoppers to prevent its being dispensed, an alarm sounded which could not be turned off.
And so it went, page after page of errors.
When he had arrived, Dennis Nedry had been under the impression that he could make all the fixes himself over the weekend. He had paled when he saw the full listing. Now he was calling his office in Cambridge, telling his staff programmers they were going to have to cancel their weekend plans and work overtime until Monday. And he had told John Arnold that he would need to use every telephone link between Isla Nublar and the mainland just to transfer program data back and forth to his programmers.
While Nedry worked, Arnold punched up a new window in his own monitor. It allowed him to see what Nedry was doing at the corner console. Not that he didn't trust Nedry. But Arnold just liked to know what was going on.
He looked at the graphics display on his right-hand console, which showed the progress of the electric Land Cruisers. They were following the river, just north of the aviary, and the ornithischian paddock.
“If you look to your left,” said the voice, “you will see the dome of the Jurassic Park aviary, which is not yet finished for visitors.” Tim saw sunlight glinting off aluminum struts in the distance. “And directly below is our Mesozoic jungle river-where, if you are lucky, you just may catch a glimpse of a very rare carnivore. Keep your eyes peeled, everyone!”
Inside the Land Cruiser, the screens showed a bird-like head topped with a flaming red crest. But everyone in Tim's car was looking out the windows. The car was driving along a high ridge, overlooking a fast-moving river below. The river was almost enclosed by dense foliage on both sides.
“There they are now,” said the voice. “The animals you see are called dilophosaurs.”
Despite what the recording said, Tim saw only one. The dilophosaur crouched on its hind legs by the river, drinking. It was built on the basic carnivore pattern, with a heavy tail, strong hind limbs, and a long neck. Its ten-foot-tall body was spotted yellow and black, like a leopard.
But it was the head that held Tim's attention. Two broad curving crests ran along the top of the head from the eyes to the nose. The crests met in the center, making a V shape above the dinosaur's head. The crests had red and black stripes, reminiscent of a parrot or toucan. The animal gave a soft hooting cry, like an owl.
“They're pretty,” Lex said.
“Dilophosaurus, ” the tape said, “is one of the earliest carnivorous dinosaurs. Scientists thought their jaw muscles were too weak to kill prey, and imagined they were primarily scavengers. But now we know they are poisonous.”
“Hey.” Tim grinned. “All right.”
Again the distinctive booting call of the dilophosaur drifted across the afternoon air toward them.
Lex shifted uneasily in her seat. “Are they really poisonous, Mr. Regis?”
“Don't worry about it,” Ed Regis said.
“But are they?”
“Well, yes, Lex.”
“Along with such living reptiles as Gila monsters and rattlesnakes, Dilophosaurus secretes a hematotoxin from glands in its mouth. Unconsciousness follows within minutes of a bite. The dinosaur will then finish the victim off at its leisure-making Dilophosaurus a beautiful but deadly addition to the animals you see here at Jurassic Park.”
The Land Cruiser turned a corner, leaving the river behind. Tim looked back, hoping for a last glimpse of the dilophosaur. This was amazing! Poisonous dinosaurs! He wished he could stop the car, but everything was automatic. He bet Dr. Grant wanted to stop the car, too.
“If you look on the bluff to the right, you'll see Les Gigantes, the site of our superb three-star dining room. Chef Alain Richard hails from the world-famous Le Beaumanière in France. Make your reservations by dialing four from your hotel rooms.”
Tim looked up on the bluff, and saw nothing.
“Not for a while, though,” Ed Regis said. “The restaurant won't even start construction until November.”
“Continuing on our prehistoric safari, we come next to the herbivores of the ornithischian group. If you look to your right, you can probably see them now.”
Tim saw two animals, standing motionless in the shade of a large tree. Triceratops: the size and gray color of an elephant, with the truculent stance of a rhino. The horns above each eye curved five feet into the air, looking almost like inverted elephant tusks. A third, rhino-like born was located near the nose. And they had the beaky snout of a rhino.
“Unlike other dinosaurs,” the voice said, “Triceratops serratus can't see well. They're nearsighted, like the rhinos of today, and they tend to be surprised by moving objects. They'd charge our car if they were close enough to see it! But relax, folks-we're safe enough here.”
“Triceratops have a fan-shaped crest behind their heads. It's made of solid bone, and it's very strong. These animals weigh about seven tons each. Despite their appearance, they are actually quite docile. They know their handlers, and they'll allow themselves to be petted. They particularly like to be scratched in the hindquarters.”
“Why don't they move?” Lex said. She rolled down her window. “Hey! Stupid dinosaur! Move!”
“Don't bother the animals, Lex,” Ed Regis said.
“Why? It's stupid. They just sit there like a picture in a book,” Lex said.
The voice was saying, “-easygoing monsters from a bygone world stand in sharp contrast to what we will see next. The most famous predator in the history of the world: the mighty tyrant lizard, known as Tyrannosaurus rex.”
“Good, Tyrannosaurus rex, ” Tim said.
“I hope he's better than these bozos,” Lex said, turning away from the triceratops.
The Land Cruiser rumbled forward.
Big Rex
“The mighty tyrannosaurs arose late in dinosaur history. Dinosaurs ruled the earth for a hundred and twenty million years, but there were tyrannosaurs for only the last fifteen million years of that period.”
The Land Cruisers had stopped at the rise of a hill. They overlooked a forested area sloping down to the edge of the lagoon. The sun was falling to the west, sinking into a misty horizon. The whole landscape of Jurassic Park was bathed in soft light, with lengthening shadows. The surface of the lagoon rippled in pink crescents. Farther south, they saw the graceful necks of the camarasaurs, standing at the water's edge, their bodies mirrored in the moving surface. It was quiet, except for the soft drone of cicadas. As they stared out at that landscape, it was possible to believe that they had really been transported millions of years back in time to a vanished world.
“It works, doesn't it?” they heard Ed Regis say, over the intercom. “I like to come here sometimes, in the evening. And just sit.”
Grant was unimpressed. “Where is T-rex?”
“Good question. You often see the little one down in the lagoon. The lagoon's stocked, so we have fish in there. The little one has learned to catch the fish. Interesting how he does it. He doesn't use his hands, but he ducks his whole head under the water. Like a bird.”
“The little one?”
“The little T-rex. He's a juvenile, two years old, and about a third grown now. Stands eight feet high, weighs a ton and a half. The other one's a full-grown tyrannosaur. But I don't see him at the moment.”
“Maybe he's down hunting the camarasaurs,” Grant said.
Regis laughed, his voice tinny over the radio. “He would if he could, believe me. Sometimes he stands by the lagoon and stares at those animals, and wiggles those little forearms of his in frustration. But the T-rex territory is completely enclosed with trenches and fences. They're disguised from view, but believe me, he can't go anywhere.”
“Then where is he?”
“Hiding,” Regis said. “He's a little shy.”
“Shy?” Malcolm said. “Tyrannosaurus rex is shy?”
“Well, he conceals himself as a general rule. You almost never see him out in the open, especially in daylight.”
“Why is that?”
“We think it's because he has sensitive skin and sunburns easily.”
Malcolm began to laugh.
Grant sighed. “You're destroying a lot of illusions.”
“I don't think you'll be disappointed,” Regis said. “Just wait.”
They heard a soft bleating sound. In the center of a field, a small cage rose up into view, lifted on hydraulics from underground. The cage bars slid down, and the goat remained tethered in the center of the field, bleating plaintively.
“Any minute now,” Regis said again. They stared out the window.
“Look at them,” Hammond said, watching the control room monitor. “Leaning out of the windows, so eager. They can't wait to see it. They have come for the danger.”
“That's what I'm afraid of,” Muldoon said. He twirled the keys on his finger and watched the Land Cruisers tensely. This was the first time that visitors had toured Jurassic Park, and Muldoon shared Arnold's apprehension.
Robert Muldoon was a big man, fifty years old, with a steel-gray mustache and deep blue eyes. Raised in Kenya, he had spent most of his life as a guide for African big-game hunters, as had his father before him. But since 1980, he had worked principally for conservation groups and zoo designers as a wildlife consultant. He had become well known; an article in the London Sunday Times had said, “What Robert Trent Jones is to golf courses, Robert Muldoon is to zoos: a designer of unsurpassed knowledge and skill.”
In 1986, he had done some work for a San Francisco company that was building a private wildlife park on an island in North America. Muldoon had laid out the boundaries for different animals, defining space and habitat requirements for lions, elephants, zebras, and hippos. Identifying which animals could be kept together, and which had to be separated. At the time, it had been a fairly routine job. He had been more interested in an Indian park called TigerWorld in southern Kashmir.
Then, a year ago, he was offered a job as game warden of Jurassic Park. It coincided with a desire to leave Africa; the salary was excellent; Muldoon had taken it on for a year. He was astonished to discover the park was really a collection of genetically engineered prehistoric animals.
It was of course interesting work, but during his years in Africa, Muldoon had developed an unblinking view of animals-an unromantic view-that frequently set him at odds with the Jurassic Park management in California, particularly the little martinet standing beside him in the control room. In Muldoon's opinion, cloning dinosaurs in a laboratory was one thing. Maintaining them in the wild was quite another.
It was Muldoon's view that some dinosaurs were too dangerous to be kept in a park setting. In part, the danger existed because they still knew so little about the animals. For example, nobody even suspected the dilophosaurs were poisonous until they were observed hunting indigenous rats on the island-biting the rodents and then stepping back, to wait for them to die. And even then nobody suspected the dilophosaurs could spit until one of the handlers was almost blinded by spitting venom.
After that, Hammond had agreed to study dilophosaur venom, which was found to contain seven different toxic enzymes. It was also discovered that the dilophosaurs could spit a distance of fifty feet. Since this raised the possibility that a guest in a car might be blinded, management decided to remove the poison sacs. The vets had tried twice, on two different animals, without success, No one knew where the poison was being secreted. And no one would ever know until an autopsy was performed on a dilophosaur and management would not allow one to be killed.
Muldoon worried even more about the velociraptors. They were instinctive hunters, and they never passed up prey, They killed even when they 't weren't hungry. They killed for the pleasure of killing. They were swift: strong runners and astonishing jumpers. They had lethal claws on all four limbs; one swipe of a forearm would disembowel a man, spilling his guts out. And they had powerful tearing jaws that ripped flesh instead of biting it. They were far more intelligent than the other dinosaurs, and they seemed to be natural cage-breakers.
Every zoo expert knew that certain animals were especially likely to get free of their cages. Some, like monkeys and elephants, could undo cage doors. Others, like wild pigs, were unusually intelligent and could lift gate fasteners with their snouts. But who would suspect that the giant armadillo was a notorious cage-breaker? Or the moose? Yet a moose was almost as skillful with its snout as an elephant with its trunk. Moose were always getting free; they had a talent for it.
And so did velociraptors.
Raptors were at least as intelligent as chimpanzees. And, like chimpanzees, they had agile hands that enabled them to open doors and manipulate objects. They could escape with ease. And when, as Muldoon had feared, one of them finally escaped, it killed two construction workers and maimed a third before being recaptured. After that episode, the visitor lodge had been reworked with heavy barred gates, a high perimeter fence, and tempered-glass windows. And the raptor holding pen was rebuilt with electronic sensors to warn of another impending escape.
Muldoon wanted guns as well. And he wanted shoulder-mounted TOW-missile launchers. Hunters knew how difficult it was to bring down a four-ton African elephant-and some of the dinosaurs weighed ten times as much. Management was horrified, insisting there be no guns anywhere on the island. When Muldoon threatened to quit, and to take his story to the press, a compromise was reached. In the end, two specially built laser-guided missile launchers were kept in a locked room in the basement. Only Muldoon had keys to the room.
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