"You think I can take it off?" she asked.
"Just do it quickly."
"Oo-kay," she said, squatting beside the small animal. It whimpered again.
The adults snorted, bobbed their heads.
Ellie petted the little juvenile, trying to soothe it, to silence its whimpering. She moved her hands toward the leather collar, lifted back the Velcro tab with a tearing sound. The adults jerked their heads.
Then one began to walk toward her.
"Oh shit," Gennaro said, under his breath.
"Don't move," Grant said. "Stay calm."
The adult walked past them, its long curved toes clicking on the concrete. The animal paused in front of Ellie, who stayed crouched by the juvenile, behind a steel box. The juvenile was exposed, and Ellie's hand was still on the collar. The adult raised its head, and sniffed the air. The adult's big head was very close to her hand, but it could not see her because of the function box. A tongue flicked out, tentatively.
Grant reached for a gas grenade, plucked it from his belt, held his thumb on the pin. Gennaro put out a restraining hand, shock his head, nodded to Ellie.
She wasn't wearing her mask.
Grant set the grenade down, reached for the shock prod. The adult was still very close to Ellie.
Ellie eased the leather strap off. The metal of the buckle clinked on concrete. The adult's head jerked fractionally, and then cocked to one side, curious. It was moving forward again to investigate, when the little juvenile squeaked happily and scampered away. The adult remained by Ellie. Then finally it turned, and walked back to the center of the nest.
Gennaro gave a long exhalation. "Jesus. Can we leave?"
"No," Grant said. "But I think we can get some work done now."
In the phosphorescent green glow of the night-vision goggles, Grant peered down into the room from the ledge, looking at the first nest. It was made of mud and straw, formed into a broad, shallow basket shape. He counted the remains of fourteen eggs. Of course he couldn't count the actual shells from this distance, and in any case they were long since broken and scattered over the floor, but he was able to count the indentations in the mud. Apparently the raptors made their nests shortly before the eggs were laid, and the eggs left a permanent impression in the mud. He also saw evidence that at least one had broken. He credited thirteen animals.
The second nest had broken in half. But Grant estimated it had contained nine eggshells. The third nest had fifteen eggs, but it appeared that three eggs had been broken early.
"What's that total?" Gennaro said.
"Thirty-four born," Grant said.
"And how many do you see?"
Grant shook his head. The animals were running all over the cavernous interior space, darting in and out of the light.
"I've been watching," Ellie said, shining her light down at her notepad. "You'd have to take photos to be sure, but the snout markings of the infants are all different. My count is thirty-three."
"And juveniles?"
"Twentyitwo. But, Alan-do you notice anything funny about them?"
"Like what?" Grant whispered.
"How they arrange themselves spatially. They're falling into some kind of a pattern or arrangement in the room."
Grant frowned. He said,"It's pretty dark."
"No, look. Look for yourself. Watch the little ones. When they are playing, they tumble and run every which way. But in between, when the babies are standing around, notice how they orient their bodies. They face either that wall, or the opposite wall. It's like they line up."
"I don't know, Ellie. You think there's a colony metastructure? Like bees?"
"No, not exactly," she said. "It's more subtle than that. It's just a tendency."
"And the babies do it?"
"No. They all do it. The adults do it, too. Watch them. I'm telling you, they line up."
Grant frowned. It seemed as if she was right. The animals engaged in all sorts of behavior, but during pauses, moments when they were watching or relaxing, they seemed to orient themselves in particular ways, almost as if there were invisible lines on the floor.
"Beats me," Grant said. "Maybe there's a breeze. . . ."
"I don't feel one, Alan."
"What are they doing? Some kind of social organization expressed as spatial structure?"
"That doesn't make sense," she said. "Because they all do it."
Gennaro flipped up his watch. "I knew this thing would come in handy one day." Beneath the watch face was a compass,
Grant said, "You have much use for that in court?"
"No." Gennaro shook his head. "My wife gave it to me," he explained, "for my birthday." He peered at the compass. "Well," he said, "they're not lined up according to anything. . . . I guess they're sort of northeast-southwest, something like that."
Ellie said, "Maybe they're hearing something, turning their heads so they can hear. . . ."
Grant frowned.
"Or maybe it's just ritual behavior," she said, "species-specific behavior that serves to identify them to one another. But maybe it doesn't have any broader meaning." Ellie sighed. "Or maybe they're weird. Maybe dinosaurs are weird. Or maybe it's a kind of communication."
Grant was thinking the same thing. Bees could communicate spatially, by doing a kind of dance. Perhaps dinosaurs could do the same thing.
Gennaro watched them and said, "Why don't they go outside?"
"They're nocturnal,"
"Yes, but it almost seems like they're hiding."
Grant shrugged. In the next moment, the infants began to squeak and hop excitedly. The adults watched curiously for a moment. And then, with hoots and cries that echoed in the dark cavernous space, all the dinosaurs wheeled and ran, heading down the concrete tunnel, into the darkness beyond.
Hammond
John Hammond sat down heavily in the damp earth of the hillside and tried to catch his breath. Dear God, it was hot, he thought. Hot and humid. He felt as if he were breathing through a sponge.
He looked down at the streambed, now forty feet below. It seemed like hours since he had left the trickling water and begun to climb the hill. His ankle was now swollen and dark purple. He couldn't put any weight on it at all. He was forced to hop up the hill on his other leg, which now burned with pain from the exertion.
And he was thirsty. Before leaving the stream behind, he had drunk from it, even though he knew this was unwise. Now he felt dizzy, and the world sometimes swirled around him. He was having trouble with his balance. But he knew he had to climb the hill, and get back to the path above. Hammond thought he had heard footsteps on the path several times during the previous hour, and each time he had shouted for help. But somehow his voice hadn't carried far enough; he hadn't been rescued. And so, as the afternoon wore on, he began to realize that he would have to climb the hillside, injured leg or not. And that was what he was doing now.
Those damned kids.
Hammond shook his head, trying to clear it- He had been climbing for more than an hour, and he had gone only a third of the distance up the hill. And he was tired, panting like an old dog. His leg throbbed. He was dizzy. Of course, he knew perfectly well that he was in no danger-he was almost within sight of his bungalow, for God's sake-but he had to admit he was tired. Sitting on the hillside, he found he didn't really want to move any more.
And why shouldn't he be tired? he thought. He was seventy-six years old. That was no age to be climbing around hillsides. Even though Hammond was in peak condition for a man his age. Personally, he expected to live to be a hundred. It was just a matter of taking care of yourself, of taking care of things as they came up. Certainly he had plenty of reasons to live. Other parks to build. Other wonders to create-
He heard a squeaking, then a chattering sound. Some kind of small birds, hopping in the undergrowth. He'd been hearing small animals all afternoon. There were all kinds of things out here: rats, possums, snakes.
The squeaking got louder, and small bits of earth rolled down the hillside past him. Something was coming. Then he saw a dark green animal hopping down the hill toward him-and another-and another.
Compys, he thought with a chill.
Scavengers.
The compys didn't look dangerous. They were about as big as chickens, and they moved up and down with little nervous jerks, like chickens. But he knew they were poisonous. Their bites had a slow-acting poison that they used to kill crippled animals.
Crippled animals, he thought, frowning.
The first of the compys perched on the hillside, staring at him. It stayed about five feet away, beyond his reach, and just watched him. Others came down soon after, and they stood in a row. Watching. They hopped up and down and chittered and waved their little clawed hands.
"Sboo! Get out!" he said, and threw a rock.
The compys backed away, but only a foot or two. They weren't afraid. They seemed to know he couldn't hurt them.
Angrily, Hammond tore a branch from a tree and swiped at them with it. The compys dodged, nipped at the leaves, squeaked happily. They seemed to think he was playing a game.
He thought again about the poison. He remembered that one of the animal handlers had been bitten by a compy in a cage. The handler had said the poison was like a narcotic-peaceful, dreamy. No pain.
You just wanted to go to sleep.
The hell with that, he thought. Hammond picked up a rock, aimed carefully, and threw it, striking one compy flat in the chest. The little animal shrieked in alarm as it was knocked backward, and rolled over its tail. The other animals immediately backed away.
Better.
Hammond turned away, and started to climb the hill once more. Holding branches in both hands, he hopped on his left leg, feeling the ache in his thigh. He had not gone more than ten feet when one of the compys jumped onto his back. He flung his arms wildly, knocking the animal away, but lost his balance and slid back down the hillside. As he came to a stop, a second compy sprang forward, and took a tiny nip from his hand. He looked with horror, seeing the blood flow over his fingers. He turned and began to scramble up the hillside again.
Another compy lumped onto his shoulder, and he felt a brief pain as it bit the back of his neck. He shrieked and smacked the animal away. He turned to face the animals, breathing hard, and they stood all around him, hopping up and down and cocking their heads, watching him. From the bite on his neck, he felt warmth flow through his shoulders, down his spine.
Lying on his back on the hillside, he began to feel strangely relaxed, detached from himself. But he realized that nothing was wrong. No error had been made. Malcolm was quite incorrect in his analysis. Hammond lay very still, as still as a child in its crib, and he felt wonderfully peaceful. When the next compy came up and bit his ankle, he made only a halfhearted effort to kick it away. The little animals edged closer. Soon they were chattering all around him, like excited birds. He raised his head as another compy jumped onto his chest, the animal surprisingly light and delicate. Hammond felt only a slight pain, very slight, as the compy bent to chew his neck.
The Beach
Chasing the dinosaurs, following the curves and slopes of concrete, Grant suddenly burst out through a cavernous opening, and found himself standing on the beach, looking at the Pacific Ocean. All around him, the young velociraptors were scampering and kicking in the sand. But, one by one, the animals moved back into the shade of the palm trees at the edge of the mangrove swamp, and there they stood, lined up in their peculiar fashion, watching the ocean. They stared fixedly to the south.
"I don't get it," Gennaro said.
"I don't, either," Grant said, "except that they clearly don't like the sun." It wasn't very sunny on the beach; a light mist blew, and the ocean was hazy. But why had they suddenly left the nest? What had brought the entire colony to the beach?
Gennaro flipped up the dial on his watch, and looked at the way the animals were standing. "Northeast-soutbwest. Same as before."
Behind the beach, deeper in the woods, they heard the hum of the electric fence. "At least we know how they get outside the fence," Ellie said.
Then they heard the throb of marine diesels, and through the mist they saw a ship appearing in the south. A large freighter, it slowly moved north.
"So that's why they came out?" Gennaro said.
Grant nodded. "They must have heard it coming,"
As the freighter passed, all the animals watched it, standing silent except for the occasional chirp or squeak. Grant was struck by the coordination of their behavior, the way they moved and acted as a group. But perhaps it was not really so mysterious. In his mind, he reviewed the sequence of events that had begun in the cave.
First the infants had been agitated. Then the adults had noticed. And finally all the animals had stampeded to the beach. That sequence seemed to imply that the younger animals, with keener bearing, had detected the boat first. Then the adults had led the troop out onto the beach. And as Grant looked, he saw that the adults were in charge now. There was a clear spatial organization along the beach, and as the animals settled down, it was not loose and shifting, the way it had been inside. Rather, it was quite regular, almost regimented. The adults were spaced every ten yards or so, each adult surrounded by a cluster of infants. The juveniles were positioned between, and slightly ahead of, the adults.
But Grant also saw that all the adults were not equal. There was a female with a distinctive stripe along her head, and she was in the very center of the group as it ranged along the beach. That same female had stayed in the center of the nesting area, too. He guessed that, like certain monkey troops, the raptors were organized around a matriarchal pecking order, and that this striped animal was the alpha female of the colony. The males, he saw, were arranged defensively at the perimeter of the group.
But unlike monkeys, which were loosely and flexibly organized, the dinosaurs settled into a rigid arrangement-almost a military formation, it seemed. Then, too, there was the oddity of the northeast-southwest spatial orientation. That was beyond Grant. But, in another sense, he was not surprised. Paleontologists had been digging up bones for so long that they had forgotten how little information could be gleaned from a skeleton. Bones might tell you something about the gross appearance of an animal, its height and weight. They might tell you something about how the muscles attached, and therefore something about the crude behavior of the animal during life. They might give you clues to the few diseases that affected bone. But a skeleton was a poor thing, really, from which to try and deduce the total behavior of an organism.
Since bones were all the paleontologists had, bones were what they used. Like other paleontologists, Grant had become very expert at working with bones. And somewhere along the way, he had started to forget the unprovable possibilities-that the dinosaurs might be truly different animals, that they might possess behavior and social life organized along lines that were utterly mysterious to their later, mammalian descendants. That, since the dinosaurs were fundamentally birds-
"Oh, my God," Grant said.
He stared at the raptors, ranged along the beach in a rigid formation, silently watching the boat. And he suddenly understood what he was looking at.
"Those animals," Gennaro said, shaking his head, "they sure are desperate to escape from here."
"No," Grant said. "They don't want to escape at all."
"They don't?"
"No," Grant said. "They want to migrate."
Approaching Dark
"Migrating!" Ellie said. "That's fantastic!"
"Yes," Grant said. He was grinning.
Ellie said, "Where do you suppose they want to go?"
"I don't know," Grant said, and then the big helicopters burst through the fog, thundering and wheeling over the landscape, their underbellies heavy with armament. The raptors scattered in alarm as one of the helicopters circled back, following the line of the surf, and then moved in to land on the beach. A door was flung open and soldiers in olive uniforms came running toward them. Grant heard the rapid babble of voices in Spanish and saw that Muldoon was already aboard with the kids. One of the soldiers said in English, "Please, you will come with us. Please, there is no time here."
Grant looked back at the beach where the raptors had been, but they were gone. All the animals had vanished. It was as if they had never existed. The soldiers were tugging at him, and he allowed himself to be led beneath the thumping blades and climbed up through the big door. Muldoon leaned over and shouted in Grant's ear, "They want us out of here now. They're going to do it now!"
The soldiers pushed Grant and Ellie and Gennaro into seats, and helped them clip on the harnesses. Tim and Lex waved to him and he suddenly saw how young they were, and how exhausted. Lex was yawning, leaning against her brother's shoulder.
An officer came toward Grant and shouted, "Se?or: are you in charge?"
"No," Grant said. "I'm not in charge."
"Who is in charge, please?"
"I don't know."
The officer went on to Gennaro, and asked the same question: "Are you in charge?"
"No," Gennaro said.
The officer looked at Ellie, but said nothing to her. The door was left open as the helicopter lifted away from the beach, and Grant leaned out to see if he could catch a last look at the raptors, but then the helicopter was above the palm trees, moving north over the island.
Grant leaned to Muldoon, and shouted: "What about the others?"
Muldoon shouted, "They've already taken off Harding and some workmen. Hammond had an accident. Found him on the hill near his bungalow. Must have fallen."
"Is he all right?" Grant said.
"No. Compys got him."
"What about Malcolm?" Grant said.
Muldoon shook his head.
Grant was too tired to feel much of anything. He turned away, and looked back out the door. It was getting dark now, and in the fading light he could barely see the little rex, with bloody jaws, crouched over a hadrosaur by the edge of the lagoon and looking up at the helicopter and roaring as it passed by.
Somewhere behind them they heard explosions, and then ahead they saw another helicopter wheeling through the mist over the visitor center, and a moment later the building burst in a bright orange fireball, and Lex began to cry, and Ellie put her arm around her and tried to get her not to look.
Grant was staring down at the ground, and he had a last glimpse of the hypsilophodonts, leaping gracefully as gazelles, moments before another explosion flared bright beneath them. Their helicopter gained altitude, and then moved cast, out over the ocean.
Grant sat back in his seat. He thought of the dinosaurs standing on the beach, and he wondered where they would migrate if they could, and he realized he would never know, and he felt sad and relieved in the same moment.
The officer came forward again, bending close to his face. "Are you in charge?"
"No," Grant said.
"Please, se?or, who is in charge?"
"Nobody," Grant said.
The helicopter gained speed as it headed toward the mainland. It was cold now, and the soldiers muscled the door closed. As they did, Grant looked back just once, and saw the island against a deep purple sky and sea, cloaked in a deep mist that blurred the white-hot explosions that burst rapidly, one after another, until it seemed the entire island was glowing, a diminishing bright spot in the darkening night.
Epilogue:
San Jose
Days went by. The government was polite, and put them up in a nice hotel in San Jose. They were free to come and go, and to call whomever they wished. But they were not permitted to leave the country. Each day a young man from the American Embassy came to visit them, to ask if they needed anything, and to explain that Washington was doing everything it could to hasten their departure. But the plain fact was that many people had died in a territorial possession of Costa Rica. The plain fact was that an ecological disaster had been narrowly averted. The government of Costa Rica felt it had been misled and deceived by John Hammond and his plans for the island. Under the circumstances, the government was not disposed to release survivors in a hurry. They did not even permit the burial of Hammond or Ian Malcolm. They simply waited.
Each day it seemed to Grant he was taken to another government office, where he was questioned by another courteous, intelligent government officer. They made him go over his story, again and again. How Grant had met John Hammond. What Grant knew of the project. How Grant had received the fax from New York. Why Grant had gone to the island. What had happened at the island.
The same details, again and again, day after day. The same story.
For a long time, Grant thought they must believe he was lying to them, and that there was something they wanted him to tell, although he could not imagine what it was. Yet, in some odd way, they seemed to be waiting.
Finally, he was sitting around the swimming pool of the hotel one afternoon, watching Tim and Lex splash, when an American in khakis walked up.
"We've never met," the American said. "My name is Marty Guitierrez. I'm a researcher here, at the Carara station."
Grant said, "You were the one who found the original specimen of the Procompsognathus"
That's right, yes." Guitierrez sat next to him. "You must be eager to go home."
"Yes," Grant said. "I have only a few days left to dig before the winter sets in. In Montana, you know, the first snow usually comes in August."
Guitierrez said, "Is that why the Hammond Foundation supported northern digs? Because intact genetic material from dinosaurs was more likely to be recovered from cold climates?"
"That's what I presume, yes."
Guitierrez nodded. "He was a clever man, Mr. Hammond."
Grant said nothing. Guitierrez sat back in the pool chair.
"The authorities won't tell you," Guitierrez said finally. "Because they are afraid, and perhaps also resentful of you, for what you have done. But something very peculiar is happening in the rural regions."
"Biting the babies?"
"No, thankfully, that has stopped. But something else. This spring, in the Ismaloya section, which is to the north, some unknown animals ate the crops in a very peculiar manner. They moved each day, in a straight line-almost as straight as an arrow-from the coast, into the mountains, into the jungle."
Grant sat upright.
"Like a migration," Guitierrez said. "Wouldn't you say?"
"What crops?" Grant said.
"Well, it was odd. They would only eat agama beans and soy, and sometimes chickens."
Grant said, "Foods rich in lysine. What happened to these animals?"
"Presumably," Guitierrez said, "they entered the jungles. In any case, they have not been found. Of course, it would be difficult to search for them in the jungle. A search party could spend years in the Ismaloya mountains, with nothing to show for it."
"And we are being kept here because . . ."
Guitierrez shrugged. "The government is worried. Perhaps there are more animals. More trouble. They are feeling cautious."
"Do you think there are more animals?" Grant said.
"I can't say. Can you?"
"No," Grant said. "I can't say."
"But you suspect?"
Grant nodded. "Possibly there are. Yes."
"I agree."
Guitierrez pushed up from his chair. He waved to Tim and Lex, playing in the pool. "Probably they will send the children home," he said. "There is no reason not to do that." He put on his sunglasses. "Enjoy your stay with us, Dr. Grant. It is a lovely country here."
Grant said, "You're telling me we're not going anywhere?"
"None of us is going anywhere, Dr. Grant," Guitierrez said, smiling. And then he turned, and walked back toward the entrance of the hotel.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In preparing this novel, I have drawn on the work of many eminent paleontologists, particularly Robert Bakker, John Horner, John Ostrom, and Gregory Paul. I have also made use of the efforts of the new generation of illustrators, including Kenneth Carpenter, Margaret Colbert, Stephen and Sylvia Czerkas, John Gurche, Mark Hallett, Douglas Henderson, and William Stout, whose reconstructions incorporate the new perception of how dinosaurs behaved.
Certain ideas presented here about paleo-DNA, the genetic material of extinct animals, were first articulated by George O. Poinar, Jr., and Roberta Hess, who formed the Extinct DNA Study Group at Berkeley. Some discussions of chaos theory derive in part from the commentaries of Ivar Ekeland and James Gleick. The computer programs of Bob Gross inspired some of the graphics. The work of the late Heinz Pagels provoked Ian Malcolm.
However, this book is entirely fiction, and the views expressed here are my own, as are whatever factual errors exist in the text.