Jurassic Park: A Novel (40 page)

“I’m tired,” Grant said.

“Then how come we’re still moving?”

Grant sat up. She was right. The raft drifted steadily north. “There must be a current.” The current was carrying them north, toward the hotel. He looked at his watch and was astonished to see it was fifteen minutes past seven. Only fifteen minutes had passed since he had last looked at his watch. It seemed like two hours.

Grant lay back against the rubber gunwales, closed his eyes, and slept.

Gennaro sat in the Jeep and listened to the buzzing of the flies, and stared at the distant palm trees wavering in the heat. He was astonished by what looked like a battleground: the grass was trampled flat for a hundred yards in every direction. One big palm tree was uprooted from the ground. There were great washes of blood in the grass, and on the rocky outcropping to their right.

Sitting beside him, Muldoon said, “No doubt about it. Rexy’s been among the hadrosaurs.” He took another drink of whiskey, and capped the bottle. “Damn lot of flies,” he said.

They waited, and watched.

Gennaro drummed his fingers on the dashboard. “What are we waiting for?”

Muldoon didn’t answer immediately. “The rex is out there somewhere,” he said, squinting at the landscape in the morning sun. “And we don’t have any weapons worth a damn.”

“We’re in a Jeep.”

“Oh, he can outrun the Jeep, Mr. Gennaro,” Muldoon said, shaking his head. “Once we leave this road and go onto open terrain, the best we can do in a four-wheel drive is thirty, forty miles an hour. He’ll run us right down. No problem for him.” Muldoon sighed. “But I don’t see much moving out there now. You ready to live dangerously?”

“Sure,” Gennaro said.

Muldoon started the engine, and at the sudden sound, two small othnielians leapt up from the matted grass directly ahead. Muldoon put the car in gear. He drove in a wide circle around the trampled site, and then moved inward, driving in decreasing concentric circles until he finally came to the place in the field where the little othnielians had been. Then he got out and walked forward in the
grass, away from the Jeep. He stopped as a dense cloud of flies lifted into the air.

“What is it?” Gennaro called.

“Bring the radio,” Muldoon said.

Gennaro climbed out of the Jeep and hurried forward. Even from a distance he could smell the sour-sweet odor of early decay. He saw a dark shape in the grass, crusted with blood, legs askew.

“Young hadrosaur,” Muldoon said, staring down at the carcass. “The whole herd stampeded, and the young one got separated, and the T-rex brought it down.”

“How do you know?” Gennaro said. The flesh was ragged from many bites.

“You can tell from the excreta,” Muldoon said. “See those chalky white bits there in the grass? That’s hadro spoor. Uric acid makes it white. But you look there”—he pointed to a large mound, rising knee-high in the grass—“that’s tyrannosaur spoor.”

“How do you know the tyrannosaur didn’t come later?”

“The bite pattern,” Muldoon said. “See those little ones there?” He pointed along the belly. “Those are from the othys. Those bites haven’t bled. They’re postmortem, from scavengers. Othys did that. But the hadro was brought down by a bite on the neck—you see the big slash there, above the shoulder blades—and that’s the T-rex, no question.”

Gennaro bent over the carcass, staring at the awkward, trampled limbs with a sense of unreality. Beside him, Muldoon flicked on his radio. “Control.”

“Yes,” John Arnold said, over the radio.

“We got another hadro dead. Juvenile.” Muldoon bent down among the flies and checked the skin on the sole of the right foot. A number was tattooed there. “Specimen is number
HD
/09.”

The radio crackled. “I’ve got something for you,” Arnold said.

“Oh? What’s that?”

“I found Nedry.”

The Jeep burst through the line of palm trees along the east road and came out into a narrower service road, leading toward the jungle river. It was hot in this area of the park, the jungle close and fetid around them. Muldoon was fiddling with the computer monitor in the Jeep, which now showed a map of the resort with overlaid
grid lines. “They found him up on remote video,” he said. “Sector 1104 is just ahead.”

Farther up the road, Gennaro saw a concrete barrier, and the Jeep parked alongside it. “He must have taken the wrong turnoff,” Muldoon said. “The little bastard.”

“What’d he take?” Gennaro asked.

“Wu says fifteen embryos. Know what that’s worth?”

Gennaro shook his head.

“Somewhere between two and ten million,” Muldoon said. He shook his head. “Big stakes.”

As they came closer, Gennaro saw the body lying beside the car. The body was indistinct and green—but then green shapes scattered away, as the Jeep pulled to a stop.

“Compys,” Muldoon said. “The compys found him.”

A dozen procompsognathids, delicate little predators no larger than ducks, stood at the edge of the jungle, chittering excitedly as the men climbed out of the car.

Dennis Nedry lay on his back, the chubby boyish face now red and bloated. Flies buzzed around the gaping mouth and thick tongue. His body was mangled—the intestines torn open, one leg chewed through. Gennaro turned away quickly, to look at the little compys, which squatted on their hind legs a short distance away and watched the men curiously. The little dinosaurs had five-fingered hands, he noticed. They wiped their faces and chins, giving them an eerily human quality which—

“I’ll be damned,” Muldoon said. “Wasn’t the compys.”

“What?”

Muldoon was shaking his head. “See these blotches? On his shirt and his face? Smell that sweet smell like old, dried vomit?”

Gennaro rolled his eyes. He smelled it.

“That’s dilo saliva,” Muldoon said. “Spit from the dilophosaurs. You see the damage on the corneas, all that redness. In the eyes it’s painful but not fatal. You’ve got about two hours to wash it out with the antivenin; we keep it all around the park, just in case. Not that it mattered to this bastard. They blinded him, then ripped him down the middle. Not a nice way to go. Maybe there’s justice in the world after all.”

The procompsognathids squeaked and hopped up and down as Gennaro opened the back door and took out gray metal tubing and
a stainless-steel case. “It’s all still there,” he said. He handed two dark cylinders to Gennaro.

“What’re these?” Gennaro said.

“Just what they look like,” Muldoon said. “Rockets.” As Gennaro backed away, he said, “Watch it—you don’t want to step in something.”

Gennaro stepped carefully over Nedry’s body. Muldoon carried the tubing to the other Jeep, and placed it in the back. He climbed behind the wheel. “Let’s go.”

“What about him?” Gennaro said, pointing to the body.

“What about him?” Muldoon said. “We’ve got things to do.” He put the car in gear. Looking back, Gennaro saw the compys resume their feeding. One jumped up and squatted on Nedry’s open mouth as it nibbled the flesh of his nose.

The jungle river became narrower. The banks closed in on both sides until the trees and foliage overhanging the banks met high above to block out the sun. Tim heard the cry of birds, and saw small chirping dinosaurs leaping among the branches. But mostly it was silent, the air hot and still beneath the canopy of trees.

Grant looked at his watch. It was eight o’clock.

They drifted along peacefully, among dappled patches of light. If anything, they seemed to be moving faster than before. Awake now, Grant lay on his back and stared up at the branches overhead. In the bow, he saw her reaching up.

“Hey, what’re you doing?” he said.

“You think we can eat these berries?” She pointed to the trees. Some of the overhanging branches were close enough to touch. Tim saw clusters of bright red berries on the branches.

“No,” Grant said.

“Why? Those little dinosaurs are eating them.” She pointed to small dinosaurs, scampering in the branches.

“No, Lex.”

She sighed, dissatisfied with his authority. “I wish Daddy was here,” she said. “Daddy always knows what to do.”

“What’re you talking about?” Tim said. “He
never
knows what to do.”

“Yes, he does,” she sighed. Lex stared at the trees as they slid past, their big roots twisting toward the water’s edge. “Just because you’re not his favorite …”

Tim turned away, said nothing.

“But don’t worry, Daddy likes you, too. Even if you’re into computers and not sports.”

“Dad’s a real sports nut,” Tim explained to Grant.

Grant nodded. Up in the branches, small pale yellow dinosaurs, barely two feet tall, hopped from tree to tree. They had beaky heads, like parrots. “You know what they call those?” Tim said. “Microceratops.”

“Big deal,” Lex said.

“I thought you might be interested.”

“Only very young boys,” she said, “are interested in dinosaurs.”

“Says who?”

“Daddy.”

Tim started to yell, but Grant raised his hand. “Kids,” he said, “shut up.”

“Why?” Lex said, “I can do what I want, if I—”

Then she fell silent, because she heard it, too. It was a bloodcurdling shriek, from somewhere downriver.

“Well, where the hell is the damn rex?” Muldoon said, talking into the radio. “Because we don’t see him here.” They were back at the sauropod compound, looking out at the trampled grass where the hadrosaurs had stampeded. The tyrannosaur was nowhere to be found.

“Checking now,” Arnold said, and clicked off.

Muldoon turned to Gennaro. “Checking now,” he repeated sarcastically. “Why the hell didn’t he check before? Why didn’t he keep track of him?”

“I don’t know,” Gennaro said.

“He’s not showing up,” Arnold said, a moment later.

“What do you mean, he’s not showing up?”

“He’s not on the monitors. Motion sensors aren’t finding him.”

“Hell,” Muldoon said. “So much for the motion sensors. You see Grant and the kids?”

“Motion sensors aren’t finding them, either.”

“Well, what are we supposed to do now?” Muldoon said.

“Wait,” Arnold said.

“Look! Look!”

Directly ahead, the big dome of the aviary rose above them.
Grant had seen it only from a distance; now he realized it was enormous—a quarter of a mile in diameter or more. The pattern of geodesic struts shone dully through the light mist, and his first thought was that the glass must weigh a ton. Then, as they came closer, he saw there wasn’t any glass—just struts. A thin mesh hung inside the elements.

“It isn’t finished,” Lex said.

“I think it’s meant to be open like that,” Grant said.

“Then all the birds can fly out.”

“Not if they’re
big
birds,” Grant said.

The river carried them beneath the edge of the dome. They stared upward. Now they were inside the dome, still drifting down the river. But within minutes the dome was so high above them that it was hardly visible in the mist. Grant said, “I seem to remember there’s a second lodge here.” Moments later, he saw the roof of a building over the tops of the trees to the north.

“You want to stop?” Tim said.

“Maybe there’s a phone. Or motion sensors.” Grant steered toward the shore. “We need to try to contact the control room. It’s getting late.”

They clambered out, slipping on the muddy bank, and Grant hauled the raft out of the water. Then he tied the rope to a tree and they set off, through a dense forest of palm trees.

“I just don’t understand,” John Arnold said, speaking into the phone. “I don’t see the rex, and I don’t see Grant and the kids anywhere, either.”

He sat in front of the consoles and gulped another cup of coffee. All around him, the control room was strewn with paper plates and half-eaten sandwiches. Arnold was exhausted. It was 8:00 a.m. on Saturday. In the fourteen hours since Nedry destroyed the computer
that ran Jurassic Park, Arnold had patiently pulled systems back on line, one after another. “All the park systems are back, and functioning correctly. The phones are working. I’ve called for a doctor for you.”

On the other end of the line, Malcolm coughed. Arnold was talking to him in his room at the lodge. “But you’re having trouble with the motion sensors?”

“Well, I’m not finding what I am looking for.”

“Like the rex?”

“He’s not reading at all now. He started north about twenty minutes ago, following along the edge of the lagoon, and then I lost him. I don’t know why, unless he’s gone to sleep again.”

“And you can’t find Grant and the kids?”

“No.”

“I think it’s quite simple,” Malcolm said. “The motion sensors cover an inadequate area.”

“Inadequate?” Arnold bristled. “They cover ninety-two—”

“Ninety-two percent of the land area, I remember,” Malcolm said. “But if you put the remaining areas up on the board, I think you’ll find that the eight percent is topologically unified, meaning that those areas are contiguous. In essence, an animal can move freely anywhere in the park and escape detection, by following a maintenance road or the jungle river or the beaches or whatever.”