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“An error,” Hammond said, nodding. “I thought so. I had the feeling all along there must be an error.”
But a moment later the screen printed:
Total Animals 292____________________________________
Species Expected Found Ver
Tyrannosaurs 2 2 4.1
Maiasaurs 21 22 3.3
Stegosaurs 4 4 3.9
Triceratops 8 8 3.1
Procompsognathids 49 65 3.9
Othnielia 16 23 3.1
Velociraptors 8 37 3.0
Apatosaurs 17 17 3.1
Hadrosaurs 11 11 3.1
Dilophosaurs 7 7 4.3
Pterosaurs 6 6 4.3
Hypsilophodontids 33 34 2.9
Euoplocepbalids 16 16 4.0
Styracosaurs 18 18 3.9
Callovosaurs 22 22 4.1
Total 238 292
The radio crackled. “Now you see the flaw in your procedures,” Malcolm said. “You only tracked the expected number of dinosaurs. You were worried about losing animals, and your procedures were designed to advise you instantly if you had less than the expected number. But that wasn't the problem. The problem was, you had more than the expected number.”
“Christ,” Arnold said.
“There can't be more,” Wu said. “We know how many we've released. There can't be more than that.”
“Afraid so, Henry,” Malcolm said. “They're breeding.”
“No.”
“Even if you don't accept Grant's eggshell, you can prove it with your own data. Take a look at the compy height graph. Arnold will put it up for you.”
[picture]
“Notice anything about it?” Malcolm said.
“It's a Poisson distribution,” Wu said. “Normal curve.”
“But didn't you say you introduced the compys in three batches? At six-month intervals?”
“ Yes...”
“Then you should get a graph with peaks for each of the three separate batches that were introduced,” Malcolm said, tapping the keyboard. “Like this.”
[picture]
“But you didn't get this graph,” Malcolm said. “The graph you actually got is a graph of a breeding population. Your compys are breeding.”
Wu shook his head. “I don't see how.”
“They're breeding, and so are the othnielia, the maiasaurs, the hypsys-and the velociraptors.”
“Christ,” Muldoon said. “There are raptors free in the park.”
“Well, it's not that bad,” Hammond said, looking at the screen. “We have increases in just three categories-well, five categories. Very small increases in two of them...”
“What are you talking about?” Wu said, loudly. “Don't you know what this means?”
“Of course I know what this means, Henry,” Hammond said. “It means you screwed up.”
“Absolutely not.”
"You've got breeding dinosaurs out there, Henry.'
“But they're all female,” Wu said. “It's impossible. There must be a mistake. And look at the numbers. A small increase in the big animals, the maiasaurs and the hypsys. And big increases in the number of small animals. It just doesn't make sense. It must be a mistake.”
The radio clicked. “Actually not,” Grant said. “I think these numbers confirm that breeding is taking place. In seven different sites around the island.”
Breeding Sites
The sky was growing darker. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Grant and the others leaned in the doors of the Jeep, staring at the screen on the dashboard. “Breeding sites?” Wu said, over the radio.
“Nests,” Grant said. “Assuming the average clutch is eight to twelve hatching eggs, these data would indicate the compys have two nests. The raptors have two nests. The othys have one nest. And the hypsys and the maias have one nest each.”
“Where are these nests?”
“We'll have to find them,” Grant said. “Dinosaurs build their nests in secluded places.”
“But why are there so few big animals?” Wu said. “If there is a maia nest of eight to twelve eggs, there should be eight to twelve new maias. Not just one.”
“That's right,” Grant said. “Except that the raptors and the compys that are loose in the park are probably eating the eggs of the bigger animals and perhaps eating the newly hatched young, as well.”
“But we've never seen that,” Arnold said, over the radio.
“Raptors are nocturnal,” he said. “Is anyone watching the park at night?”
There was a long silence.
“I didn't think so,” Grant said.
“It still doesn't make sense,” Wu said. “You can't support fifty additional animals on a couple of nests of eggs.”
“No,” Grant said. “I assume they are eating something else as well. Perhaps small rodents. Mice and rats?”
There was another silence.
“Let me guess,” Grant said. “When you first came to the island, you had a problem with rats. But as time passed, the problem faded away.”
“Yes. That's true... ”
“And you never thought to investigate why.”
“Well, we just assumed...” Arnold said.
“Look,” Wu said, “the fact remains, all the animals are female. They can't breed.”
Grant had been thinking about that. He had recently learned of an intriguing West German study that he suspected held the answer. “When you made your dinosaur DNA,” Grant said, “you were working with fragmentary pieces, is that right?”
“Yes,” Wu said.
“In order to make a complete strand, we're you ever required to include DNA fragments from other species?”
“Occasionally, yes,” Wu said. “It's the only way to accomplish the job. Sometimes we included avian DNA, from a variety of birds, and sometimes reptilian DNA.”
“Any amphibian DNA? Specifically, frog DNA?”
“Possibly. I'd have to check.”
“Check,” Grant said. “I think you'll find that holds the answer.”
Malcolm said, “Frog DNA? Why frog DNA?”
Gennaro said impatiently, “Listen, this is all very intriguing, but we're forgetting the main question: have any animals gotten off the island?”
Grant said, “We can't tell from these data.”
“Then how are we going to find out?”
“There's only one way I know,” Grant said. “We'll have to find the individual dinosaur nests, inspect them, and count the remaining egg fragments. From that we may be able to determine how many animals were originally hatched. And we can begin to assess whether any are missing.”
Malcolm said, “Even so, you won't know if the missing animals are killed, or dead from natural causes, or whether they have left the island.”
“No,” Grant said, “but it's a start. And I think we can get more information from an intensive look at the population graphs.”
“How are we going to find these nests?”
“Actually,” Grant said, “I think the computer will be able to help us with that.”
“Can we go back now?” Lex said. “I'm hungry.”
“Yes, let's go,” Grant said, smiling at her. “You've been very patient.”
“You'll be able to eat in about twenty minutes,” Ed Regis said, starting toward the two Land Cruisers.
“I'll stay for a while,” Ellie said, “and get photos of the stego with Dr. Harding's camera. Those vesicles in the mouth will have cleared up by tomorrow.”
“I want to get back,” Grant said. “I'll go with the kids.”
“I will, too,” Malcolm said.
“I think I'll stay,” Gennaro said, “and go back with Harding in his Jeep, with Dr. Sattler.”
“Fine, let's go.”
They started walking. Malcolm said, “Why exactly is our lawyer staying?”
Grant shrugged. “I think it might have something to do with Dr. Sattler.”
“Really? The shorts, you think?”
“It's happened before,” Grant said.
When they came to the Land Cruisers, Tim said, “I want to ride in the front one this time, with Dr. Grant.”
Malcolm said, “Unfortunately, Dr. Grant and I need to talk.”
“I'll just sit and listen. I won't say anything,” Tim said.
“It's a private conversation,” Malcolm said.
“Tell you what, Tim,” Ed Regis said. “Let them sit in the rear car by themselves. We'll sit in the front car, and you can use the night-vision goggles. Have you ever used night-vision goggles, Tim? They're goggles with very sensitive CCDs that allow you to see in the dark.”
“Neat,” he said, and moved toward the first car.
“Hey!” Lex said. “I want to use it, too.”
“No,” Tim said.
“No fair! No fair! You get to do everything, Timmy!”
Ed Regis watched them go and said to Grant, “I can see what the ride back is going to be like.”
Grant and Malcolm climbed into the second car. A few raindrops spattered the windshield. “Let's get going,” Ed Regis said. “I'm about ready for dinner. And I could do with a nice banana daiquiri. What do you say, folks? Daiquiri sound good?” He pounded the metal panel of the car. “See you back at camp” he said, and he started running toward the first car, and climbed aboard.
A red light on the dashboard blinked. With a soft electric whirr, the Land Cruisers started off.
Driving back in the fading light, Malcolm seemed oddly subdued. Grant said, “You must feel vindicated. About your theory.”
“As a matter of fact, I'm feeling a bit of dread. I suspect we are at a very dangerous point.”
“Why?”
“Intuition.”
“Do mathematicians believe in intuition?”
“Absolutely. Very important, intuition. Actually, I was thinking of fractals,” Malcolm said. “You know about fractals?”
Grant shook his head. “Not really, no.”
"Fractals are a kind of geometry, associated with a man named Mandelbrot. Unlike ordinary Euclidean geometry that everybody learns in school-squares and cubes and spheres-fractal geometry appears to describe real objects in the natural world. Mountains and clouds are fractal shapes. So fractals are probably related to reality. Somehow.
“Well, Mandelbrot found a remarkable thing with his geometric tools. He found that things looked almost identical at different scales.”
“At different scales?” Grant said.
“For example,” Malcolm said, “a big mountain, seen from far away, has a certain rugged mountain shape. If you get closer, and examine a small peak of the big mountain, it will have the same mountain shape. In fact, you can go all the way down the scale to a tiny speck of rock, seen under a microscope-it will have the same basic fractal shape as the big mountain.”
“I don't really see why this is worrying you,” Grant said. He yawned. He smelled the sulfur fumes of the volcanic steam. They were coming now to the section of road that ran near the coastline, overlooking the beach and the ocean.
“It's a way of looking at things,” Malcolm said. “Mandelbrot found a sameness from the smallest to the largest. And this sameness of scale also occurs for events.”
“Events?”
“Consider cotton prices,” Malcolm said. “There are good records of cotton prices going back more than a hundred years. When you study fluctuations in cotton prices, you find that the graph of price fluctuations in the course of a day looks basically like the graph for a week, which looks basically like the graph for a year, or for ten years. And that's how things are. A day is like a whole life. You start out doing one thing, but end up doing something else, plan to run an errand, but never get there.... And at the end of your life, your whole existence has that same haphazard quality, too. Your whole life has the same shape as a single day.”
“I guess it's one way to look at things,” Grant said.
“No,” Malcolm said. “It's the only way to look at things. At least, the only way that is true to reality. You see, the fractal idea of sameness carries within it an aspect of recursion, a kind of doubling back on itself, which means that events are unpredictable. That they can change suddenly, and without warning.”
“Okay...”
“But we have soothed ourselves into imagining sudden change as something that happens outside the normal order of things. An accident, like a car crash. Or beyond our control, like a fatal illness. We do not conceive of sudden, radical, irrational change as built into the very fabric of existence. Yet it is. And chaos theory teaches us,” Malcolm said, “that straight linearity, which we have come to take for granted in everything from physics to fiction, simply does not exist. Linearity is an artificial way of viewing the world. Real life isn't a series of interconnected events occurring one after another like beads strung on a necklace. Life is actually a series of encounters in which one event may change those that follow in a wholly unpredictable, even devastating way.” Malcolm sat back in his seat, looking toward the other Land Cruiser, a few yards ahead. “That's a deep truth about the structure of our universe. But, for some reason, we insist on behaving as if it were not true.”
At that moment, the cars jolted to a stop, “What's happened?” Grant said.
Up ahead, they saw the kids in the car, pointing toward the ocean. Offshore, beneath lowering clouds, Grant saw the dark outline of the supply boat making its way back toward Puntarenas.
“Why have we stopped?” Malcolm said.
Grant turned on the radio and heard the girl saying excitedly, “Look there, Timmy! You see it, it's there!”
Malcolm squinted at the boat. “They talking about the boat?”
“Apparently.”
Ed Regis climbed out of the front car and came running back to their window. “I'm sorry,” he said, “but the kids are all worked up. Do you have binoculars here?”
“For what?”
“The little girl says she sees something on the boat. Some kind of animal,” Regis said.
Grant grabbed the binoculars and rested his elbows on the window ledge of the Land Cruiser. He scanned the long shape of the supply ship. It was so dark it was almost a silhouette; as he watched, the ship's running lights came on, brilliant in the dark purple twilight.
“Do you see anything?” Regis said.
“No,” Grant said.
“They're low down,” Lex said, over the radio. “Look low down.”
Grant tilted the binoculars down, scanning the bull just above the waterline. The supply ship was broad-beamed, with a splash flange that ran the length of the ship. But it was quite dark now, and he could hardly make out details.
“No, nothing...”
“I can see them,” Lex said impatiently. “Near the back. Look near the back! ”
“How can she see anything in this light?” Malcolm said.
“Kids can see,” Grant said. “They've got visual acuity we forgot we ever had.”
He swung the binoculars toward the stern, moving them slowly, and suddenly he saw the animals. They were playing, darting among the silhouetted stern structures. He could see them only briefly, but even in the fading light he could tell that they were upright animals, about two feet tall, standing with stiff balancing tails.
“You see them now?” Lex said.
“I see them,” he said.
“What are they?”
“They're raptors,” Grant said, “At least two. Maybe more. Juveniles.”
“Jesus, ” Ed Regis said. “That boat's going to the mainland.”
Malcolm shrugged. “Don't get excited. Just call the control room and tell them to recall the boat.”
Ed Regis reached in and grabbed the radio from the dashboard. They heard hissing static, and clicks as he rapidly changed channels. “There's something wrong with this one,” he said. “It's not working.”
He ran off to the first Land Cruiser. They saw him duck into it. Then he looked back at them. “There's something wrong with both the radios,” he said. “I can't raise the control room.”
“Then let's get going,” Grant said.
In the control room, Muldoon stood before the big windows that overlooked the park. At seven o'clock, the quartz floodlights came on all over the island, turning the landscape into a glowing jewel stretching away to the south. This was his favorite moment of the day. He heard the crackle of static from the radios.
“The Land Cruisers have started again,” Arnold said. “They're on their way home.”
“But why did they stop?” Hammond said. “And why can't we talk to them?”
“I don't know,” Arnold said. "Maybe they turned off the radios in the cars.
“Probably the storm,” Muldoon said. “Interference from the storm.”
“They'll be here in twenty minutes,” Hammond said. “You better call down and make sure the dining room is ready for them. Those kids are going to be hungry.”
Arnold picked up the phone and heard a steady monotonous hiss. “What's this? What's going on?”
“Jesus, hang that up,” Nedry said. “You'll screw up the data stream.”
“You've taken all the phone lines? Even the internal ones?”
“I've taken all the lines that communicate outside,” Nedry said. “But your internal lines should still work.”
Arnold punched console buttons one after another. He heard nothing but hissing on all the lines.
“Looks like you've got 'em all.”
“Sorry about that,” Nedry said. “I'll clear a couple for you at the end of the next transmission, in about fifteen minutes.” He yawned. “Looks like a long weekend for me. I guess I'll go get that Coke now.” He picked up his shoulder bag and headed for the door. “Don't touch my console, okay?”
The door closed.
“What a slob,” Hammond said.
“Yeah,” Arnold said. “But I guess he knows what he's doing.”
Along the side of the road, clouds of volcanic steam misted rainbows in the bright quartz lights. Grant said into the radio, “How long does it take the ship to reach the mainland?”
“Eighteen hours,” Ed Regis said. “More or less. It's pretty reliable.” He glanced at his watch. “It should arrive around eleven tomorrow morning.”
Grant frowned. “You still can't talk to the control room?”
“Not so far.”
“How about Harding? Can you reach him?”
“No, I've tried. He may have his radio turned off.”
Malcolm was shaking his head. “So we're the only ones who know about the animals on the ship.”
“I'm trying to raise somebody,” Ed Regis said. “I mean, Christ, we don't want those animals on the mainland.”
“How long until we get back to the base?”
“From here, another sixteen, seventeen minutes,” Ed Regis said.
At night, the whole road was illuminated by big floodlights. It felt to Grant as if they were driving through a bright green tunnel of leaves. Large raindrops spattered the windshield.
Grant felt the Land Cruiser slow, then stop. “Now what?”
Lex said, “I don't want to stop. Why did we stop?”
And then, suddenly, all the floodlights went out. The road was plunged into darkness, Lex said, “Hey!”
“Probably just a power outage or something,” Ed Regis said. “I'm sure the lights'll be on in a minute.”
“What the hell?” Arnold said, staring at his monitors.
“What happened?” Muldoon said. “You lose power?”
“Yeah, but only power on the perimeter. Everything in this building's working fine. But outside, in the park, the power is gone. Lights, TV cameras, everything.” His remote video monitors had gone black.
“What about the two Land Cruisers?”
“Stopped somewhere around the tyrannosaur paddock.”
“Well,” Muldoon said, "call Maintenance and let's get the power back on.
Arnold picked up one of his phones and heard hissing: Nedry's computers talking to each other. “No phones. That damn Nedry. Nedry! Where the hell is he?”
Dennis Nedry pushed open the door marked FERTILIZATION, With the perimeter power out, all the security-card locks were disarmed. Every door in the building opened with a touch.
The problems with the security system were high on Jurassic Park's bug list. Nedry wondered if anybody ever imagined that it wasn't a bug-tbat Nedry had programmed it that way. He had built in a classic trap door. Few programmers of large computer systems could resist the temptation to leave themselves a secret entrance. Partly it was common sense: if inept users locked up the system-and then called you for help-you always had a way to get in and repair the mess. And partly it was a kind of signature: Kilroy was here.
And partly it was insurance for the future. Nedry was annoyed with the Jurassic Park project; late in the schedule, InGen had demanded extensive modifications to the system but hadn't been willing to pay for them, arguing they should be included under the original contract. Lawsuits were threatened; letters were written to Nedry's other clients, implying that Nedry was unreliable. It was blackmail, and in the end Nedry had been forced to eat his overages on Jurassic Park and to make the changes that Hammond wanted.
But later, when he was approached by Lewis Dodgson at Biosyn, Nedry was ready to listen. And able to say that he could indeed get past Jurassic Park security. He could get into any room, any system, anywhere in the park. Because he had programmed it that way. Just in case.
He entered the fertilization room. The lab was deserted; as he had anticipated, all the staff was at dinner. Nedry unzipped his shoulder bag and removed the can of Gillette shaving cream. He unscrewed the base, and saw the interior was divided into a series of cylindrical slots.
He pulled on a pair of heavy insulated gloves and opened the walk-in freezer marked CONTENTS VIABLE BIOLOGICAL MAINTAIN -10C MINIMUM. The freezer was the size of a small closet, with shelves from floor to ceiling. Most of the shelves contained reagents and liquids in plastic sacs. To one side he saw a smaller nitrogen cold box with a heavy ceramic door. He opened it, and a rack of small tubes slid out, in a cloud of white liquid-nitrogen smoke.
The embryos were arranged by species: Stegosaurus, Apatosaurus, Hadrosaurus, Tyrannosaurus. Each embryo in a thin glass container, wrapped in silver foil, stoppered with polylene. Nedry quickly took two of each, slipping them into the shaving cream can.
Then he screwed the base of the can shut and twisted the top. There was a hiss of releasing gas inside, and the can frosted in his hands. Dodgson had said there was enough coolant to last thirty-six hours. More than enough time to get back to San José.
Nedry left the freezer, returned to the main lab. He dropped the can back in his bag, zipped it shut.
He went back into the hallway. The theft had taken less than two minutes. He could imagine the consternation upstairs in the control room, as they began to realize what had happened. All their security codes were scrambled, and all their phone lines were jammed. Without his help, it would take hours to untangle the mess-but in just a few minutes Nedry would he back in the control room, setting things right.
And no one would ever suspect what he had done.
Grinning, Dennis Nedry walked down to the ground floor, nodded to the guard, and continued downstairs to the basement. Passing the neat lines of electric Land Cruisers, he went to the gasoline-powered Jeep parked against the wall. He climbed into it, noticing some odd gray tubing on the passenger seat. It looked almost like a rocket launcher, he thought, as he turned the ignition key and started the Jeep.
Nedry glanced at his watch. From here, into the park, and three minutes straight to the east dock. Three minutes from there back to the control room.
Piece of cake.
“Damn it!” Arnold said, punching buttons on the console. "It's all screwed up.
Muldoon was standing at the windows, looking out at the park. The lights had gone out all over the island, except in the immediate area around the main buildings. He saw a few staff personnel hurrying to get out of the rain, but no one seemed to realize anything was wrong. Muldoon looked over at the visitor lodge, where the lights burned brightly.
“Uh-oh,” Arnold said. “We have real trouble.”
“What's that?” Muldoon said. He turned away from the window, and so he didn't see the Jeep drive out of the underground garage and head east along the maintenance road into the park.
“That idiot Nedry turned off the security systems,” Arnold said. “The whole building's opened up. None of the doors are locked any more.”
“I'll notify the guards,” Muldoon said.
“That's the least of it,” Arnold said. “When you turn off the security, you turn off all the peripheral fences as well.”
“The fences?” Muldoon said.
“The electrical fences,” Arnold said. “They're off, all over the island.”
“You mean...”
“That's right,” Arnold said. “The animals can get out now.” Arnold lit a cigarette. “Probably nothing will happen, but you never know....”
Muldoon started toward the door. “I better drive out and bring in the people in those two Land Cruisers,” he said. “Just in case.”
Muldoon quickly went downstairs to the garage. He wasn't really worried about the fences going down. Most of the dinosaurs had been in their paddocks for nine months or more, and they had brushed up against the fences more than once, with notable results. Muldoon knew how quickly animals learned to avoid shock stimuli. You could train a laboratory pigeon with just two or three stimulation events. So it was unlikely the dinosaurs would now approach the fences.
Muldoon was more concerned about what the people in the cars would do. He didn't want them getting out of the Land Cruisers, because once the power came back on, the cars would start moving again, whether the people were inside them or not. They might be left behind. Of course, in the rain it was unlikely they would leave the cars. But, still... you never knew....
He reached the garage and hurried toward the Jeep. It was lucky, he thought, that he had had the foresight to put the launcher in it. He could start right out, and he out there in-
It was gone!
“What the hell?” Muldoon stared at the empty parking space, astonished.
The Jeep was gone!
What the hell was happening?
FOURTH ITERATION
[picture]
“Inevitably, underlying instabilities begin to appear.”
IAN MALCOLM
The Main Road
Rain drummed loudly on the roof of the Land Cruiser. Tim felt the night-vision goggles pressing heavily on his forehead. He reached for the knob near his ear and adjusted the intensity. There was a brief phosphorescent flare, and then, in shades of electronic green and black, he could see the Land Cruiser behind, with Dr. Grant and Dr. Malcolm inside. Neat!
Dr. Grant was staring out the front windshield toward him. Tim saw him pick up the radio from the dash. There was a burst of static, and then he heard Dr. Grant's voice: “Can you see us back here?”
Tim picked up the radio from Ed Regis. “I see you.”
“Everything all right?”
“We're fine, Dr. Grant.”
“Stay in the car.”
“We will. Don't Worry.” He clicked the radio off.
Ed Regis snorted. “It's pouring down rain. Of course we'll stay in the car,” he muttered.
Tim turned to look at the foliage at the side of the road. Through the goggles, the foliage was a bright electronic green, and beyond he could see sections of the green grid pattern of the fence. The Land Cruisers were stopped on the downslope of a hill, which must mean they were someplace near the tyrannosaur area. It would be amazing to see a tyrannosaur with these night-vision goggles. A real thrill. Maybe the tyrannosaur would come to the fence and look over at them. Tim wondered if its eyes would glow in the dark when he saw them. That would be neat.
But he didn't see anything, and eventually he stopped looking. Everyone in the cars fell silent. The rain thrummed on the roof of the car. Sheets of water streamed down over the sides of the windows. It was hard for Tim to see out, even with the goggles.
“How long have we been sitting here?” Malcolm asked.
“I don't know. Four or five minutes.”
“I wonder what the problem is.”
“Maybe a short circuit from the rain.”
“But it happened before the rain really started.”
There was another silence. In a tense voice, Lex said, “But there's no lightning, right?” She had always been afraid of lightning, and she now sat nervously squeezing her leather mitt in her hands.
Dr. Grant said, “What was that? We didn't quite read that.”
“Just my sister talking.”
“Oh.”
Tim again scanned the foliage, but saw nothing. Certainly nothing as big as a tyrannosaur. He began to wonder if the tyrannosaurs came out at night. Were they nocturnal animals? Tim wasn't sure if he had ever read that. He had the feeling that tyrannosaurs were all-weather, day or night animals. The time of day didn't matter to a tyrannosaur.
The rain continued to pour.
“Hell of a rain,” Ed Regis said. “It's really coming down.”
Lex said, “I'm hungry.”
“I know that, Lex,” Regis said, “but we're stuck here, sweetie. The cars run on electricity in buried cables in the road.”
“Stuck for how long?”
“Until they fix the electricity.”
Listening to the sound of the rain, Tim felt himself growing sleepy. He yawned, and turned to look at the palm trees on the left side of the road, and was startled by a sudden tbump as the ground shook. He swung back just in time to catch a glimpse of a dark shape as it swiftly crossed the road between the two cars.
“Jesus! ”
“What was it?”
“It was huge, it was big as the car-”
“Tim! Are you there?”
He picked up the radio. “Yes, I'm here.”
“Did you see it, Tim?”
“No,” Tim said. “I missed it.”
“What the hell was it?” Malcolm said.
“Are you wearing the night-vision goggles, Tim?”
“Yes. I'll watch,” Tim said.
“Was it the tyrannosaur?” Ed Regis asked.
“I don't think so. It was in the road.”
“But you didn't see it?” Ed Regis said.
“No. ”
Tim felt had that he had missed seeing the animal whatever it was.
There was a sudden white crack of lightning, and his night goggles flared bright green. He blinked his eyes and started counting. “One one thousand... two one thousand...”
The thunder crashed, deafeningly loud and very close. Lex began to cry. “Oh, no...”
“Take it easy, honey,” Ed Regis said. “It's just lightning.”
Tim scanned the side of the road. The rain was coming down bard now, shaking the leaves with hammering drops. It made everything move. Everything seemed alive. He scanned the leaves....
He stopped. There was something beyond the leaves.
Tim looked up, higher.
Behind the foliage, beyond the fence, he saw a thick body with a pebbled, grainy surface like the bark of a tree. But it wasn't a tree. He continued to look higher, sweeping the goggles upward-
He saw the huge head of the tyrannosaurus. Just standing there, looking over the fence at the two Land Cruisers. The lightning flashed again, and the big animal rolled its head and bellowed in the glaring light. Then darkness, and silence again, and the pounding rain.
“Tim?”
“Yes, Dr. Grant.”
“You see what it is?”
“Yes, Dr. Grant.”
Tim had the sense that Dr. Grant was trying to talk in a way that wouldn't upset his sister.
“What's going on right now?”
“Nothing,” Tim said, watching the tyrannosaur through his night goggles. “Just standing on the other side of the fence.”
“I can't see much from here, Tim.”
“I can see fine, Dr. Grant. It's just standing there.”
“Okay.”
Lex continued to cry, snuffling.
There was another pause. Tim watched the tyrannosaur. The head was huge! The animal looked from one vehicle to another. Then back again. It seemed to stare right at Tim.
In the goggles, the eyes glowed bright green.
Tim felt a chill, but then, as he looked down the animal's body, moving down from the massive head and jaws, he saw the smaller, muscular forelimb. It waved in the air and then it gripped the fence.
“Jesus Christ,” Ed Regis said, staring out the window.
The greatest preditor the world has ever known. The most fearsome attack in human history. Somewhere in the back of his publicist's brain, Ed Regis was still writing copy. But he could feel his knees begin to shake uncontrollably, his trousers flapping like flags, Jesus, he was frightened. He didn't want to be here. Alone among all the people in the two cars, Ed Regis knew what a dinosaur attack was like. He knew what happened to people. He had seen the mangled bodies that resulted from a raptor attack. He could picture it in his mind. And this was a rex! Much, much bigger! The greatest meat-eater that ever walked the earth!
Jesus.
When the tyrannosaur roared it was terrifying, a scream from some other world. Ed Regis felt the spreading warmth in his trousers. He'd peed in his pants. He was simultaneously embarrassed and terrified. But he knew he had to do something. He couldn't just stay here. He had to do something. Something. His hands were shaking, trembling against the dash.
“Jesus Christ,” he said again.
“Bad language,” Lex said, wagging her finger at him.
Tim heard the sound of a door opening, and he swung his head away from the tyrannosaur-the night-vision goggles streaked laterally-in time to see Ed Regis stepping out through the open door, ducking his head in the rain.
“Hey,” Lex said, “where are you going?”
Ed Regis just turned and ran in the opposite direction from the tyrannosaur, disappearing into the woods. The door to the Land Cruiser hung open; the paneling was getting wet.
“He left!” Lex said. “Where did he go? He left us alone!”
“Shut the door,” Tim said, but she had started to scream, “He left us! He left us!”
“Tim, what's going on?” It was Dr. Grant, on the radio. “Tim?”
Tim leaned forward and tried to shut the door. From the back seat, he couldn't reach the handle. He looked back at the tyrannosaur as lightning flashed again, momentarily silhouetting the huge black shape against the white-flaring sky.
“Tim, what's happening?”
“He left us, he left us!”
Tim blinked to recover his vision. When he looked again, the tyrannosaur was standing there, exactly as before, motionless and huge. Rain dripped from its jaws. The forelimb gripped the fence....
And then Tim realized: the tyrannosaur was holding on to the fence! The fence wasn't electrified any more!
“Lex, close the door!”
The radio crackled. “Tim!”
“I'm here, Dr. Grant.”
“What's going on?”
“Regis ran away,” Tim said.
“He what?”
“He ran away. I think he saw that the fence isn't electrified,” Tim said.
“The fence isn't electrified?” Malcolm said, over the radio. “Did he say the fence isn't electrified?”
“Lex,” Tim said, “close the door. ” But Lex was screaming, “He left us, he left us!” in a steady, monotonous wail, and there was nothing for Tim to do but climb out of the back door, into the slashing rain, and shut the door for her. Thunder rumbled, and the lightning flashed again. Tim looked up and saw the tyrannosaur crashing down the cyclone fence with a giant hind limb.
“Timmy!”
He jumped back in and slammed the door, the sound lost in the tbunderclap.
The radio: “Tim! Are you there?”
He grabbed the radio. “I'm here.” He turned to Lex. “Lock the doors. Get in the middle of the car. And shut up.”
Outside, the tyrannosaur rolled its head and took an awkward step forward. The claws of its feet had caught in the grid of the flattened fence. Lex saw the animal finally, and became silent, still. She watched with wide eyes.
Radio crackle. “Tim.”
“Yes, Dr. Grant.”
“Stay in the car. Stay down. Be quiet. Don't move, and don't make noise.”
“Okay.”
“You should be all right. I don't think it can open the car.”
“Okay.”
"Just stay quiet, so you don't arouse its attention any more than necessary.
“Okay.” Tim clicked the radio off. “You hear that, Lex?” His sister nodded, silently. She never took her eyes off the dinosaur. The tyrannosaur roared. In the glare of lightning, they saw it pull free of the fence and take a bounding step forward.
Now it was standing between the two cars. Tim couldn't see Dr. Grant's car any more, because the huge body blocked his view. The rain ran in rivulets down the pebbled skin of the muscular hind legs. He couldn't see the animal's head, which was high above the roofline.
The tyrannosaur moved around the side of their car. It went to the very spot where Tim had gotten out of the car. Where Ed Regis had gotten out of the car. The animal paused there. The big head ducked down, toward the mud.
Tim looked back at Dr. Grant and Dr. Malcolm in the rear car. Their faces were tense as they stared forward through the windshield.
The huge head raised back up, jaws open, and then stopped by the side windows. In the glare of lightning, they saw the beady, expressionless reptile eye moving in the socket.
It was looking in the car.
His sister's breath came in ragged, frightened gasps. He reached out and squeezed her arm, hoping she would stay quiet. The dinosaur continued to stare for a long time through the side window. Perhaps the dinosaur couldn't really see them, he thought. Finally the head lifted up, out of view again.
“Timmy...” Lex whispered.
“It's okay,” Tim whispered. “I don't think it saw us.”
He was looking back toward Dr. Grant when a jolting impact rocked the Land Cruiser and shattered the windshield in a spiderweb as the tyrannosaur's head crashed against the hood of the Land Cruiser. Tim was knocked flat on the seat. The night-vision goggles slid off his forehead.
He got back up quickly, blinking in the darkness, his mouth warm with blood.
“Lex?”
He couldn't see his sister anywhere.
The tyrannosaur stood near the front of the Land Cruiser, its chest moving as it breathed, the forelimbs making clawing movements in the air.
“Lex!” Tim whispered. Then he heard her groan. She was lying somewhere on the floor under the front seat.
Then the huge head came down, entirely blocking the shattered windshield. The tyrannosaur banged again on the front hood of the Land Cruiser. Tim grabbed the seat as the car rocked on its wheels. The tyrannosaur banged down twice more, denting the metal.
Then it moved around the side of the car. The big raised tail blocked his view out of all the side windows. At the back, the animal snorted, a deep rumbling growl that blended with the thunder. It sank its jaws into the spare tire mounted on the back of the Land Cruiser and, in a single head shake, tore it away. The rear of the car lifted into the air for a moment; then it thumped down with a muddy splash.
“Tim!” Dr. Grant said. “Tim, are you there?”
Tim grabbed the radio. “We're okay,” he said. There was a shrill metallic scrape as claws raked the roof of the car. Tim's heart was pounding in his chest. He couldn't see anything out of the windows on the right side except pebbled leathery flesh. The tyrannosaur was leaning against the car, which rocked back and forth with each breath, the springs and metal creaking loudly.
Lex groaned again. Tim put down the radio, and started to crawl over into the front seat. The tyrannosaur roared and the metal roof dented downward. Tim felt a sharp pain in his head and tumbled to the floor, onto the transmission bump. He found himself lying alongside Lex, and he was shocked to see that the whole side of her head was covered in blood. She looked unconscious.
There was another jolting impact, and pieces of glass fell all around him. Tim felt rain. He looked up and saw that the front windshield had broken out. There was just a jagged rim of glass and, beyond, the big head of the dinosaur.
Looking down at him.
Tim felt a sudden chill and then the head rushed forward toward him, the jaws open. There was the squeal of metal against teeth, and he felt the hot stinking breath of the animal and a thick tongue stuck into the car through the windshield opening. The tongue slapped wetly around inside the car-he felt the hot lather of dinosaur saliva-and the tyrannosaur roared-a deafening sound inside the car-
The head pulled away abruptly.
Tim scrambled up, avoiding the dent in the roof. There was still room to sit on the front seat by the passenger door. The tyrannosaur stood in the rain near the front fender. It seemed confused by what had happened to it. Blood dripped freely from its jaws.
The tyrannosaur looked at Tim, cocking its head to stare with one big eye. The head moved close to the car, sideways, and peered in. Blood spattered on the dented bood of the Land Cruiser, mixing with the rain.
It can't get to me, Tim thought. It's too big.
Then the head pulled away, and in the flare of lightning he saw the hind leg lift up. And the world tilted crazily as the Land Cruiser slammed over its side, the windows splatting in the mud. He saw Lex fall helplessly against the side window, and he fell down beside her, banging his head. Tim felt dizzy. Then the tyrannosaur's jaws clamped onto the window frame, and the whole Land Cruiser was lifted up into the air, and shaken.
“Timmy!” Lex shrieked, so near to his ear that it hurt. She was suddenly awake, and he grabbed her as the tyrannosaur crashed the car down again. Tim felt a stabbing pain in his side, and his sister fell on top of him. The car went up again, tilting crazily. Lex shouted “Timmy!” and he saw the door give way beneath her, and she fell out of the car into the mud but Tim couldn't answer, because in the next instant everything swung crazily-he saw the trunks of the palm trees sliding downward past him-moving sideways through the air-he glimpsed the ground very far below-the hot roar of the tyrannosaur-the blazing eye-the tops of the palm trees-
And then, with a metallic scraping shriek, the car fell from the tyrannosaur's jaws, a sickening fall, and Tim's stomach heaved in the moment before the world became totally black, and silent.
In the other car, Malcolm gasped. “Jesus! What happened to the car?” Grant blinked his eyes as the lightning faded.
The other car was gone.
Grant couldn't believe it. He peered forward, trying to see through the rain-streaked windshield. The dinosaur's body was so large, it was probably just blocking-
No. In another flash of lightning, he saw clearly: the car was gone.
“What happened?” Malcolm said.
“I don't know.”
Faintly, over the rain, Grant heard the sound of the little girl screaming. The dinosaur was standing in darkness on the road up ahead, but they could see well enough to know that it was bending over now, sniffing the ground.
Or eating something on the ground.
“Can you see?” Malcolm said, squinting.
“Not much, no,” Grant said. The rain pounded on the roof of the car. He listened for the little girl, but he didn't hear her any more. The two men sat in the car, listening.
“Was it the girl?” Malcolm said, finally. “It sounded like the girl.”
“It did, yes.”
“Was it?”
“I don't know,” Grant said. He felt a seeping fatigue overtake him. Blurred through the rainy windshield, the dinosaur was coming toward their car. Slow, ominous strides, coming right toward them.
Malcolm said, “You know, at times like this one feels, well, perhaps extinct animals should be left extinct. Don't you have that feeling now?”
“Yes,” Grant said. He was feeling his heart pounding.
“Umm. Do you, ah, have any suggestions about what we do now?”
“I can't think of a thing,” Grant said.
Malcolm twisted the handle, kicked open the door, and ran. But even as he did, Grant could see he was too late, the tyrannosaur too close. There was another crack of lightning, and in that instant of glaring white light, Grant watched in horror as the tyrannosaur roared, and leapt forward.
Grant was not clear about exactly what happened next. Malcolm was running, his feet splashing in the mud. The tyrannosaur bounded alongside him and ducked its massive head, and Malcolm was tossed into the air like a small doll.
By then Grant was out of the car, too, feeling the cold rain slashing his face and body. The tyrannosaur had turned its back to him, the huge tail swinging through the air. Grant was tensing to run for the woods when suddenly the tyrannosaur spun back to face him, and roared.
Grant froze.
He was standing beside the passenger door of the Land Cruiser, drenched in rain. He was completely exposed, the tyrannosaur no more than eight feet away. The big animal roared again. At so close a range the sound was terrifyingly loud. Grant felt himself shaking with cold and fright. He pressed his trembling hands against the metal of the door panel to steady them.
The tyrannosaur roared once more, but it did not attack. It cocked its head, and looked with first one eye, then the other, at the Land Cruiser. And it did nothing.
It just stood there.
What was going on?
The powerful jaws opened and closed. The tyrannosaur bellowed angrily, and then the big hind leg came up and crashed down on the roof of the car; the claws slid off with a metal screech, barely missing Grant as he stood there, still unmoving.
The foot splashed in the mud. The head ducked down in a slow arc, and the animal inspected the car, snorting. It peered into the front windshield. Then, moving toward the rear, it banged the passenger door shut, and moved right toward Grant as he stood there. Grant was dizzy with fear his heart pounding inside his chest. With the animal so close, he could smell the rotten flesh in the mouth, the sweetish blood-smell, the sickening stench of the carnivore....
He tensed his body, awaiting the inevitable.
The big head slid past him, toward the rear of the car. Grant blinked.
What had happened?
Was it possible the tyrannosaur hadn't seen him? It seemed as if it hadn't. But how could that be? Grant looked back to see the animal sniffing the rear-mounted tire. It nudged the tire with its snout, and then the head swung back. Again it approached Grant.
This time the animal stopped, the black flaying nostrils just inches away. Grant felt the animal's startling hot breath on his face. But the tyrannosaur wasn't sniffing like a dog. It was just breathing, and if anything it seemed puzzled.
No, the tyrannosaur couldn't see him. Not if he stood motionless. And in a detached academic corner of his mind he found an explanation for that, a reason why-
The laws opened before him, the massive head raised up. Grant squeezed his fists together, and bit his lip, trying desperately to remain motionless, to make no sound.
The tyrannosaur bellowed in the night air.
But by now Grant was beginning to understand. The animal couldn't see him, but it suspected he was there, somewhere, and was trying with its bellowing to frighten Grant into some revealing movement. So long as he stood his ground, Grant realized, he was invisible.
In a final gesture of frustration, the big hind leg lifted up and kicked the Land Cruiser over, and Grant felt searing pain and the surprising sensation of his own body flying through the air. It seemed to be happening very slowly, and he had plenty of time to feel the world turn colder, and watch the ground rush up to strike him in the face.
Return
“Oh damn,” Harding said. “Will you look at that.”
They were sitting in Harding's gasoline-powered Jeep, staring forward past the flick flick of the windshield wipers. In the yellow flare of the headlamps, a big fallen tree blocked the road.
“Must have been the lightning,” Gennaro said. “Hell of a tree.”
“We can't get past it,” Harding said. “I better tell Arnold in control.” He picked up the radio and twisted the channel dial. “Hello, John. Are you there, John?”
There was nothing but steady hissing static. “I don't understand,” he said. “The radio lines seem to be down.”
“It must be the storm,” Gennaro said.
“I suppose,” Harding said.
“Try the Land Cruisers,” Ellie said.
Harding opened the other channels, but there was no answer.
“Nothing,” he said. “They're probably back to camp by now, and outside the range of our little set. In any case, I don't think we should stay here. It'll be hours before Maintenance gets a crew out here to move that tree.”
He turned the radio off, and put the Jeep into reverse.
“Wbat're you going to do?” Ellie said.
“Go back to the turnout, and get onto the maintenance road. Fortunately there's a second road system,” Harding explained. “We have one road for visitors, and a second road for animal handlers and feed trucks and so on. We'll drive back on that maintenance road. It's a little longer. And not so scenic. But you may find it interesting. If the rain lets up, we'll get a glimpse of some of the animals at night. We should be back in thirty, forty minutes,” Harding said. “If I don't get lost.”
He turned the Jeep around in the night, and headed south again.
Lightning flashed, and every monitor in the control room went black.
Arnold sat forward, his body rigid and tense. Jesus, not now. Not now. That was all he needed-to have everything go out now in the storm. All the main power circuits were surge-protected, of course, but Arnold wasn't sure about the modems Nedry was using for his data transmission. Most people didn't know it was possible to blow an entire system through a modem-the lightning pulse climbed back into the computer through the telephone line, and-bang!-no more motherboard. No more RAM. No more file server. No more computer.
The screens flickered. And then, one by one, they came back on.
Arnold sighed, and collapsed back in his chair.
He wondered again where Nedry had gone. Five minutes ago, he'd sent guards to search the building for him. The fat bastard was probably in the bathroom reading a comic book. But the guards hadn't come back, and they hadn't called in.
Five minutes. If Nedry was in the building, they should have found him by now.
“Somebody took the damned Jeep,” Muldoon said as he came back in the room. “Have you talked to the Land Cruisers yet?”
“Can't raise them on the radio,” Arnold said. “I have to use this, because the main board is down. It's weak, but it ought to work. I've tried on all six channels. I know they have radios in the cars, but they're not answering.”
“That's not good,” Muldoon said.
“If you want to go out there, take one of the maintenance vehicles.”
“I would,” Muldoon said, “but they're all in the east garage, more than a mile from here. Where's Harding?”
“I assume he's on his way back.”
“Then he'll pick up the people in the Land Cruisers on his way.”
“I assume so.”
“Anybody tell Hammond the kids aren't back yet?”
“Hell no,” Arnold said. “I don't want that son of a bitch running around here, screaming at me. Everytbing's all right, for the moment. The Land Cruisers are just stuck in the rain. They can sit a while, until Harding brings them back. Or until we find Nedry, and make that little bastard turn the systems back on.”
“You can't get them back on?” Muldoon said.
Arnold shook his head. “I've been trying. But Nedry's done something to the system. I can't figure out what, but if I have to go into the code itself, that'll take hours. We need Nedry. We've got to find the son of a bitch right away.”
Nedry
The sign said ELECTRIFIED FENCE 10,000 VOLTS DO NOT TOUCH, but Nedry opened it with his bare band, and unlocked the gate, swinging it wide. He went back to the Jeep, drove through the gate, and then walked back to close it behind him.
Now he was inside the park itself, no more than a mile from the east dock. He stepped on the accelerator and bunched forward over the steering wheel, peering through the rain-slashed windshield as he drove the Jeep down the narrow road. He was driving fast-too fast-but he had to keep to his timetable. He was surrounded on all sides by black jungle, but soon he should be able to see the beach and the ocean off to his left.
This damned storm, he thought. It might screw up everything. Because if Dodgson's boat wasn't waiting for him at the east dock when Nedry got there, the whole plan would be ruined. Nedry couldn't wait very long, or he would be missed back at the control room. The whole idea behind the plan was that he could drive to the east dock, drop off the embryos, and be back in a few minutes, before anyone noticed. It was a good plan, a clever plan. Nedry'd worked on it carefully, refining every detail. This plan was going to make him a million and a half dollars, one point five meg. That was ten years of income in a single tax-free shot, and it was going to change his life. Nedry'd been damned careful, even to the point of making Dodgson meet him in the San Francisco airport at the last minute with an excuse about wanting to see the money, Actually, Nedry wanted to record his conversation with Dodgson, and mention him by name on the tape. Just so that Dodgson wouldn't forget he owed the rest of the money, Nedry was including a copy of the tape with the embryos. In short, Nedry had thought of everything.
Except this damned storm.
Something dashed across the road, a white flash in his headlights. It looked like a large rat. It scurried into the underbrush, dragging a fat tail. Possum. Amazing that a possum could survive here. You'd think the dinosaurs would get an animal like that.
Where was the damned dock?
He was driving fast, and he'd already been gone five minutes. He should have reached the east dock by now. Had he taken a wrong turn? He didn't think so. He hadn't seen any forks in the road at all.
Then where was the dock?
It was a shock when he came around a corner and saw that the road terminated in a gray concrete barrier, six feet tall and streaked dark with rain. He slammed on the brakes, and the Jeep fishtailed, losing traction in an end-to-end spin, and for a horrified moment he thought he was going to smash into the barrier-he knew he was going to smash-and he spun the wheel frantically, and the Jeep slid to a stop, the headlamps just a foot from the concrete wall.
He paused there, listening to the rhythmic flick of the wipers. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He looked back down the road. He'd obviously taken a wrong turn somewhere. He could retrace his steps, but that would take too long.
He'd better try and find out where the hell he was.
He got out of the Jeep, feeling heavy raindrops spatter his head. It was a real tropical storm, raining so hard that it hurt. He glanced at his watch, pushing the button to illuminate the digital dial. Six minutes gone. Where the hell was he? He walked around the concrete barrier and on the other side, along with the rain, he heard the sound of gurgling water. Could it be the ocean? Nedry hurried forward, his eyes adjusting to the darkness as he went. Dense jungle on all sides. Raindrops slapping on the leaves.
The gurgling sound became louder, drawing him forward, and suddenly he came out of the foliage and felt his feet sink into soft earth and saw the dark currents of the river. The river! He was at the jungle river!
Damn, he thought. At the river where? The river ran for miles through the island. He looked at his watch again. Seven minutes gone. “You have a problem, Dennis,” he said aloud.
As if in reply, there was a soft hooting cry of an owl in the forest.
Nedry hardly noticed; he was worrying about his plan. The plain fact was that time had run out. There wasn't a choice any more. He had to abandon his original plan. All he could do was go back to the control room, restore the computer, and somehow try to contact Dodgson, to set up the drop at the east dock for the following night. Nedry would have to scramble to make that work, but he thought he could pull it off. The computer automatically logged all calls; after Nedry got through to Dodgson, he'd have to go back into the computer and erase the record of the call. But one thing was sure-he couldn't stay out in the park any longer, or his absence would be noticed.
Nedry started back, heading toward the glow of the car's headlights. He was drenched and miserable. He heard the soft booting cry once more, and this time he paused. That hadn't really sounded like an owl. And it seemed to be close by, in the jungle somewhere off to his right.
As he listened, he heard a crashing sound in the underbrush. Then silence. He waited, and heard it again. It sounded distinctly like something big, moving slowly through the jungle toward him.
Something big. Something near. A big dinosaur.
Get out of here.
Nedry began to run. He made a lot of noise as he ran, but even so he could hear the animal crashing through the foliage. And hooting.
It was coming closer.
Stumbling over tree roots in the darkness, clawing his way past dripping branches, he saw the Jeep ahead, and the lights shining around the vertical wall of the barrier made him feel better. In a moment he'd be in the car and then he'd get the hell out of here. He scrambled around the barrier and then he froze.
The animal was already there.
But it wasn't close. The dinosaur stood forty feet away, at the edge of the illumination from the headlamps. Nedry hadn't taken the tour, so he hadn't seen the different types of dinosaurs, but this one was strange-looking. The ten-foot-tall body was yellow with black spots, and along the head ran a pair of red V-shaped crests. The dinosaur didn't move, but again gave its soft hooting cry.
Nedry waited to see if it would attack. It didn't. Perhaps the headlights from the Jeep frightened it, forcing it to keep its distance, like a fire.
The dinosaur stared at him and then snapped its head in a single swift motion. Nedry felt something smack wetly against his chest. He looked down and saw a dripping glob of foam on his rain-soaked shirt. He touched it curiously, not comprehending....
It was spit.
The dinosaur had spit on him.
It was creepy, he thought. He looked back at the dinosaur and saw the head snap again, and immediately felt another wet smack against his neck, just above the shirt collar. He wiped it away with his hand.
Jesus, it was disgusting. But the skin of his neck was already starting to tingle and burn. And his hand was tingling, too. It was almost like he had been touched with acid.
Nedry opened the car door, glancing back at the dinosaur to make sure it wasn't going to attack, and felt a sudden, excruciating pain in his eyes, stabbing like spikes into the back of his skull, and he squeezed his eyes shut and gasped with the intensity of it and threw up his hands to cover his eyes and felt the slippery foam trickling down both sides of his nose.
Spit.
The dinosaur had spit in his eyes.
Even as he realized it, the pain overwhelmed him, and he dropped to his knees, disoriented, wheezing. He collapsed onto his side, his cheek pressed to the wet ground, his breath coming in thin whistles through the constant, ever-screaming pain that caused flashing spots of light to appear behind his tightly shut eyelids.
The earth shook beneath him and Nedry knew the dinosaur was moving, he could hear its soft hooting cry, and despite the pain he forced his eyes open and still he saw nothing but flashing spots against black. Slowly the realization came to him.
He was blind.
The hooting was louder as Nedry scrambled to his feet and staggered back against the side panel of the car, as a wave of nausea and dizziness swept over him. The dinosaur was close now, he could feel it coming close, he was dimly aware of its snorting breath.
But he couldn't see.
He couldn't see anything, and his terror was extreme.
He stretched out his hands, waving them wildly in the air to ward off the attack he knew was coming.
And then there was a new, searing pain, like a fiery knife in his belly, and Nedry stumbled, reaching blindly down to touch the ragged edge of his shirt, and then a thick, slippery mass that was surprisingly warm, and with horror he suddenly knew he was holding his own intestines in his hands. The dinosaur had torn him open. His guts had fallen out.
Nedry fell to the ground and landed on something scaly and cold, it was the animal's foot, and then there was new pain on both sides of his head. The pain grew worse, and as he was lifted to his feet he knew the dinosaur had his head in its jaws, and the horror of that realization was followed by a final wish, that it would all be ended soon.
Bungalow
“More coffee?” Hammond asked politely.
“No, thank you,” Henry Wu said, leaning back in his chair. “I couldn't eat anything more.” They were sitting in the dining room of Hammond's bungalow, in a secluded corner of the park not far from the labs. Wu had to admit that the bungalow Hammond had built for himself was elegant, with sparse, almost Japanese lines. And the dinner had been excellent, considering the dining room wasn't fully staffed yet.
But there was something about Hammond that Wu found troubling. The old man was different in some way... subtly different. All during dinner, Wu had tried to decide what it was. In part, a tendency to ramble, to repeat himself, to retell old stories. In part, it was an emotional lability, flaring anger one moment, maudlin sentimentality the next. But all that could be understood as a natural concomitant of age. John Hammond was, after all, almost seventy-seven.
But there was something else. A stubborn evasiveness. An insistence on having his way. And, in the end, a complete refusal to deal with the situation that now faced the park.
Wu had been stunned by the evidence (he did not yet allow himself to believe the case was proved) that the dinosaurs were breeding. After Grant had asked about amphibian DNA, Wu had intended to go directly to his laboratory and check the computer records of the various DNA assemblies. Because, if the dinosaurs were in fact breeding, then everything about Jurassic Park was called into question-their genetic development methods, their genetic control methods, everything. Even the lysine dependency might be suspect. And if these animals could truly breed, and could also survive in the wild...
Henry Wu wanted to check the data at once. But Hammond had stubbornly insisted Wu accompany him at dinner.
“Now then, Henry, you must save room for ice cream,” Hammond said, pushing back from the table. “Maria makes the most wonderful ginger ice cream.”
“All right.” Wu looked at the beautiful, silent serving girl. His eyes followed her out of the room, and then he glanced up at the single video monitor mounted in the wall. The monitor was dark. “Your monitor's out,” Wu said.
“Is it?” Hammond glanced over. “Must be the storm.” He reached behind him for the telephone. “I'll just check with John in control.”
Wu could hear the static crackle on the telephone line. Hammond shrugged, and set the receiver back in its cradle. “Lines must be down,” he said. “Or maybe Nedry's still doing data transmission. He has quite a few bugs to fix this weekend. Nedry's a genius in his way, but we had to press him quite hard, toward the end, to make sure he got things right.”
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