The Lost World

Michael Crichton

CENTURY

Published by Century Books in 1995

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

(c) Michael Crichton 1995

Endpaper map copyright (c) David Cain 1995

Endpaper dinosaur illustrations (c) Gregory Wenzel 1995

The right of Michael Crichton has been asserted under the Copyright, Designs and

Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

First published in the United Kingdom by

Century Books

Random House UK Limited

20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London, SW1V 2SA

Random House, Australia (Pty) Limited

20 Alfred Street, Milsons Point, Sydney,

New South Wales 2061, Australia

Random House New Zealand Limited

18 Poland Road, Glenfield, Auckland 10, New Zealand

Random House South Africa (Pry) Limited

PO Box 337, Bergvlei, South Africa

Random House UK Limited Reg. No. 954009

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library

Papers used by Random House UK Limited are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

ISBN 0 7126 76902

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

Mackays of Chatham PLC, Chatham, Kent

To Carolyn Conger

"What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world."

ALBERT EINSTEIN

"Deep in the chaotic regime, slight changes in structure almost always cause vast changes in behavior. Complex controllable behavior seems precluded."

STUART KAUFFMAN

"Sequelae are inherently unpredictable."

IAN MALCOLM

Introduction:

"Extinction at the K-T Boundary"

The late twentieth century has witnessed a remarkable growth in scientific interest in the subject of extinction.

    It is hardly a new subject - Baron Georges Cuvier had first demonstrated that species became extinct back in 1786, not long after the American Revolution. Thus the fact of extinction had been accepted by scientists for nearly three-quarters of a century before Darwin put forth his theory of evolution. And after Darwin, the many controversies that swirled around his theory did not often concern issues of extinction.

    On the contrary, extinction was generally considered as unremarkable as a car running out of gas. Extinction was simply proof of failure to adapt. How species adapted was intensely studied and fiercely debated. But the fact that some species failed was hardly given a second thought. What was there to say about it? However, beginning in the 1970s, two developments began to focus attention on extinction in a new way.

    The first was the recognition that human beings were now very numerous, and were altering the planet at a very rapid rate-eliminating traditional habitats, clearing the rain forest, polluting air and water, perhaps even changing global climate. In the process, many animal species were becoming extinct. Some scientists cried out in alarm; others were quietly uneasy. How fragile was the earth's ecosystem? Was the human species engaged in behavior that would eventually lead to its own

extinction?

    No one was sure. Since nobody had ever bothered to study extinction in an organized way, there was little information about rates of extinction in other geological eras. So scientists began to look closely at extinction in the past, hoping to answer anxieties about the present.

    The second development concerned new knowledge about the death of the dinosaurs. It had long been known that all dinosaur species had become extinct in a relatively short time at the end of the Cretaceous era, approximately sixty-five million years ago. Exactly how quickly those extinctions occurred was a subject of long-standing debate: some paleontologists believed they had been catastrophically swift, others felt the dinosaurs had died out more gradually, over a period of ten thousand to ten million years - hardly a rapid event.

    Then, in 1980, physicist Luis Alvarez and three coworkers discovered high concentrations of the element iridium in rocks from the end of the Cretaceous and the start of the Tertiary - the so-called K-T boundary. (The Cretaceous was shorthanded as "K" to avoid confusion with the Cambrian and other geological periods.) Iridium is rare on earth, but abundant in meteors. Alvarez's team argued that the presence of so much iridium in rocks at the K-T boundary suggested that a giant meteorite, many miles in diameter, had collided with the earth at that time. They theorized that the resulting dust and debris had darkened the skies, inhibited photosynthesis, killed plants and animals, and ended the reign of the dinosaurs.

    This dramatic theory captured the media and public imagination. It began a controversy which continued for many years. Where was the crater from this meteor? Various candidates were proposed. There were five major periods of extinction in the past-had meteors caused them all? Was there a twenty-six-million-year cycle of catastrophe? Was the planet even now awaiting another devastating impact?

    After more than a decade, these questions remained unanswered. The debate raged on - until August 1993, when, at a weekly seminar of the Santa Fe Institute, an iconoclastic mathematician named Ian Malcolm announced that none of these questions mattered, and that the debate over a meteoric impact was "a frivolous and irrelevant speculation."

"Consider the numbers," Malcolm said, leaning on the podium, staring forward at his audience. "On our planet there are currently fifty million species of plants and animals. We think that is a remarkable diversity, yet it is nothing compared to what has existed before. We estimate that there have been fifty billion species on this planet since life began. That means that for every thousand species that ever existed on the planet, only one remains today. Thus 99.9 percent of all species that ever lived are extinct. And mass killings account for only five percent of that total. The overwhelming majority of species died one at a time."

    The truth, Malcolm said, was that life on earth was marked by a continuous, steady rate of extinction. By and large, the average lifespan of a species was four million years. For mammals, it was a million years. Then the species vanished. So the real pattern was one of species rising, flourishing, and dying out in a few million years. On average, one species a day had become extinct throughout the history of life on the earth.

    "But why?" he asked. "What leads to the rise and decline of earth's species in a four-million-year life cycle?

    "One answer is that we do not recognize how continuously active our planet is. just in the last fifty thousand years - a geological blink of an eye - the rain forests have severely contracted, then expanded again. Rain forests aren't an ageless feature of the planet; they're actually rather new. As recently as ten thousand years ago, when there were human hunters on the American continent, an ice pack extended as far down as New York City. Many animals became extinct during that time.

    "So most of earth's history shows animals living and dying against a very active background. That probably explains 90 percent of extinctions. If the seas dry up, or become more salty, then of course ocean plankton will all die. But complex animals like dinosaurs are another matter, because complex animals have insulated themselves - literally and figuratively - against such changes. Why do complex animals die out? Why don't they adjust? Physically, they seem to have the capacity to survive. There appears to be no reason why they should die. And yet they do.

    "What I wish to propose is that complex animals become extinct not because of a change in their physical adaptation to their environment, but because of their behavior. I would suggest that the latest thinking ill chaos theory, or nonlinear dynamics, provides tantalizing hints to how this happens.

    It suggests to us that behavior of complex animals can change very rapidly, and not always for the better. It suggests that behavior can cease to be responsive to the environment, and lead to decline and death. It suggests that animals may stop adapting. Is this what happened to the dinosaurs? Is this the true cause of their disappearance? We may never know. But it is no accident that human beings are so interested in dinosaur extinction. The decline of the dinosaurs allowed mammals - including us - to flourish. And that leads us to wonder whether the disappearance of the dinosaurs is going to be repeated, sooner or later, by us as well. Whether at the deepest level the fault lies not in blind fate-in some fiery meteor from the skies - but in our own behavior. At the moment, we have no answer."

    And then he smiled.

    "But I have a few suggestions," he said.

THE LOST WORLD

Prologue:

"Life at the Edge of Chaos"

The Santa Fe Institute was housed in a series of buildings on Canyon Road which had formerly been a convent, and the Institute's seminars were held in a room which had served as a chapel. Now, standing at the podium, with a shaft of sunlight shining down on him, Ian Malcolm paused dramatically before continuing his lecture.

    Malcolm was forty years old, and a familiar figure at the Institute. He had been one of the early pioneers in chaos theory, but his promising career had been disrupted by a severe injury during a trip to Costa Rica; Malcolm had, in fact, been reported dead in several newscasts. "I was sorry to cut short the celebrations in mathematics departments around the country," he later said, "but it turned out I was only slightly dead. The surgeons have done wonders, as they will be the first to tell you. So now I am back - in my next iteration, you might say."

    Dressed entirely in black, leaning on a cane, Malcolm gave the impression of severity. He was known within the Institute for his unconventional analysis, and his tendency to pessimism. His talk that August, entitled "Life at the Edge of Chaos," was typical of his thinking. In it, Malcolm presented his analysis of chaos theory as it applied to evolution.

    He could not have wished for a more knowledgeable audience. The Santa Fe Institute had been formed in the mid-1980s by a group of scientists interested in the implications of chaos theory. The scientists came from many fields-physics, economics, biology, computer science. What they had in common was a belief that the complexity of the world concealed an underlying order which had previously eluded science, and which would be revealed by chaos theory, now known as complexity theory. In the words of one, complexity theory was "the science of the twenty-first century."

    The Institute had explored the behavior of a great variety of complex systems - corporations in the marketplace, neurons in the human brain, enzyme cascades within a single cell, the group behavior of migratory birds - systems so complex that it had not been possible to study them before the advent of the computer. The research was new, and the findings were surprising.

    It did not take long before the scientists began to notice that complex systems showed certain common behaviors. They started to think of these behaviors as characteristic of all complex systems. They realized that these behaviors could not be explained by analyzing the components of the systems. The time-honored scientific approach of reductionism - taking the watch apart to see how it worked - didn't get you anywhere with complex systems, because the interesting behavior seemed to arise from the spontaneous interaction of the components. The behavior wasn't planned or directed; it just happened. Such behavior was therefore called "self-organizing."

    "Of the self-organizing behaviors," Ian Malcolm said, "two are of particular interest to the study of evolution. One is adaptation. We see it everywhere. Corporations adapt to the marketplace, brain cells adapt to signal traffic, the immune system adapts to infection, animals adapt to their food supply. We have come to think that the ability to adapt is characteristic of complex systems-and may be one reason why evolution seems to lead toward more complex organisms."

    He shifted at the podium, transferring his weight onto his cane. "But even more important," he said, "is the way complex systems seem to strike a balance between the need for order and the imperative to change. Complex systems tend to locate themselves at a place we call 'the edge of chaos.'We imagine the edge of chaos as a place where there is enough innovation to keep a living system vibrant, and enough stability to keep it from collapsing into anarchy. It is a zone of conflict and upheaval, where the old and the new are constantly at War. Finding the balance point must be a delicate matter - if a living system drifts too close, it risks falling over into incoherence and dissolution; but if the system moves too far away from the edge, it becomes rigid, frozen, totalitarian. Both conditions lead to extinction. Too much change is as destructive as too little. Only at the edge of chaos can complex systems flourish."

    He paused. "And, by implication, extinction is the inevitable result of one or the other strategy -too much change, or too little."

    In the audience, heads were nodding. This was familiar thinking to most of the researchers present. Indeed, the concept of the edge of chaos was very nearly dogma at the Santa Fe Institute.

    "Unfortunately," Malcolm continued, "the gap between this theoretical construct and the fact of extinction is vast. We have no way to know if our thinking is correct. The fossil record can tell us that an animal became extinct at a certain time, but not why. Computer simtulations are of limited value. Nor can we perform experiments on living organisms. Thus, we are obliged to admit that extinction - untestable, unsuited for experiment - may not be a scientific subject at all. And this may explain why the subject has been embroiled in the most intense religious and political controversy. I would remind you that there is no religious debate about Avogadro's number, or Planck's constant, or the functions of the pancreas. But about extinction, there has been perpetual controversy for two hundred years. And I wonder how it is to be solved if -Yes? What is it?"

    At the back of the room, a hand had gone up, waving impatiently. Malcolm frowned, visibly annoyed. The tradition at the Institute was that questions were held until the presentation ended; it was poor form to interrupt a speaker. "You had a question?" Malcolm asked.

From the back of the room, a young man in his early thirties stood. "Actually," the man said, "an observation."

    The speaker was dark and thin, dressed in khaki shirt and shorts, precise in his movements and manner. Malcolm recognized him as a paleontologist from Berkeley named Levine, who was spending the Summer at the Institute. Malcolm had never spoken to him, but he knew his reputation: Levine was generally agreed to be the best paleobiologist of his generation, perhaps the best in the world. But most people at the Institute disliked him, finding him pompous and arrogant.

    "I agree," Levine continued, "that the fossil record is not helpful in addressing extinction. Particularly if your thesis is that behavior is the cause of extinction - because bones don't tell us much about behavior. But I disagree that your behavioral thesis is untestable. In point of fact, it implies an outcome. Although perhaps you haven't yet thought of it."

    The room was silent. At the podium, Malcolm frowned. The eminent mathematician was not accustomed to being told he had not thought through his ideas. "What's your point," he said.

    Levine appeared indifferent to the tension in the room. "Just this," he said. "During the Cretaceous, Dinosauria were widely distributed across the planet, We have found their remains on every continent, and in every climatic zone - even in the Antarctic. Now. If their extinction was really the result of their behavior, and not the consequence of a Catastrophe, or a disease, or a change in plant life, or any of the other broad-scale explanations that have been proposed, then it seems to me highly unlikely that they all changed their behavior at the same time, everywhere. And that in turn means that there may well be some remnants of these animals still alive on the earth. Why couldn't you look for them?"

    "You could," Malcolm said coldly, "if that amused you. And if you had no more compelling use for your time."

    "No, no," Levine said earnestly. "I'm quite serious. What if the dinosaurs did not become extinct? What if they still exist? Somewhere in an isolated spot on the planet."

    "You're talking about a Lost World," Malcolm said, and heads in the room nodded knowingly. Scientists at the Institute had developed a shorthand for referring to common evolutionary scenarios. They spoke of the Field of Bullets, the Gambler's Ruin, the Game of Life, the Lost World, the Red Queen, and Black Noise. These were well-defined ways of thinking about evolution. But they were all -

    "No," Levine said stubbornly. "I am speaking literally."

    "Then you're badly deluded," Malcolm said, with a dismissive wave of his hand. He turned away from the audience, and walked slowly to the blackboard. "Now, if we consider the implications of the edge of chaos, we may begin by asking ourselves, what is the minimal unit of life? Most contemporary definitions of life would include the presence of DNA, but there are two examples which suggest to us that this definition is too narrow. If you consider viruses and so-called prions, it is clear that life may in fact exist without DNA...."

        At the back of the room, Levine stared for a moment. Then, reluctantiv he sat down, and began to make notes.

The Lost World Hypothesis

The lecture ended, Malcolm hobbled across the open courtyard of the Institute, shortly after noon. Walking beside him was Sarah Harding, a young field biologist visiting from Africa. Malcolm had known her for several years, since he had been asked to serve as an Outside reader for her doctoral thesis at Berkeley.

    Crossing the courtyard in the hot summer sun, they made an unlikely pair: Malcolm dressed in black, stooped and ascetic, leaning on his cane; Harding compact and muscular, looking young and energetic in shorts and a tee shirt, her short black hair pushed up on her forehead with sunglasses. Her field of study was African predators, lions and hyenias. She was scheduled to return to Nairobi the next day.

    The two had been close since Malcolm's surgery. Harding had been on a sabbatical year in Austin, and had helped nurse Malcolm back to health, after his many operations. For a while it seemed as if a romance had blossomed, and that Malcolm, a confirmed bachelor, would settle down. But then Harding had gone back to Africa, and Malcolm had gone to Santa Fe. Whatever their former relationship had been, they were now just friends.

    They discussed the questions that had come at the end of his lecture. From Malcolm's point of view, there had been only the predictable objections: that mass extinctions were important; that human beings owed their existence to the Cretaceous extinction, which had wiped out the dinosaurs and allowed the mammals to take over. As one questioner had pompously phrased it, "The Cretaceous allowed our own sentient awareness to arise on the planet."

    Malcom's reply was immediate: "What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There's no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told -and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior, which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may, well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion. Next question."

    Now, walking across the courtyard, Sarah Harding laughed. "They didn't care for that."

    I admit it's discouraging," he said. "But it can't be helped." He shook his head. "These are some of the best scientists in the country, and still...no interesting ideas. By the way, what's the story on that guy who interrupted me?"

    "Richard Levine?" She laughed. "Irritating, isn't he? He has a worldwide reputation for being a pain in the ass."

    Malcolm grunted. "I'd say."

    "He's wealthy, is the problem," Harding said, "You know about the Becky dolls?"

    "No," Malcolm said, giving her a glance.

    "Well, every little girl in America does. There's a series: Becky and Sally and Frances, and several more. They're Americana dolls. Levine is the heir of the company. So he's a smartass rich kid, Impetuous, does whatever he wants."

    Malcolm nodded. "You have time for lunch?"

    "Sure, I would be - "

    "Dr. Malcolm! Wait up! Please! Dr. Malcolm!"

    Malcom turned. Hurrying across the courtyard toward them was the gangling figure of Richard Levine.

    "Ah, shit," Malcolm said.

    "Dr. Malcolm," Levine said, coming up. "I was surprised that you didn't take my proposal more seriously."

    "How could I?" Malcolm said. "It's absurd."

    "Yes, but - "

    "Ms. Harding and I were just going to lunch," Malcolm said, gesturing to Sarah.

    "Yes, but I think you should reconsider," Levine said, pressing on. "Because I believe my argument is valid - it is entirely possible, even likely, that dinosaurs still exist. You must know there are persistent rumors about animals in Costa Rica, where I believe you have spent time."

    "Yes, and in the case of Costa Rica I can tell you - "

    "Also in the Congo," Levine said, continuing. "For years there have been reports by pygmies of a large sauropod, perhaps even an apatosaur, in the dense forest around Bokambu. And also in the high jungles of Irian Jaya, there is supposedly an animal the size of a rhino, which perhaps is a remnant ceratopsian - "

    "Fantasy," Malcolm said. "Pure fantasy. Nothing has ever been seen. No photographs. No hard evidence."

    "Perhaps not," Levine said. "But absence of proof is not proof of absence. I believe there may well be a locus of these animals, survivals from a past time."

    Malcolm shrugged. "Anything is possible," he said.

    "But in point of fact, survival is possible," Levine insisted. "I keep getting calls about new animals in Costa Rica. Remnants, fragments."

    Malcolm paused. "Recently?"

    "Not for a while."

    "Umm," Malcolm said. "I thought so."

    "The last call was nine months ago," Levine said. "I was in Siberia looking at that frozen baby mammoth, and I couldn't get back in time. But I'm told it was some kind of very large, atypical lizard, found dead In the jungle of Costa Rica."

    "And? What happened to it?"

    "The remains were burned."

    "So nothing is left?"

    "That's right."

    "No photographs? No proof?"

    "Apparently not."

    "So it's just a story," Malcolm said.

    "Perhaps. But I believe it is worth mounting an expedition, to find out about these reported survivals."

    Malcolm stared at him. "An expedition? To find a hypothetical Lost World? Who is going to pay for it?"

    "I am," Levine said. "I have already begun the preliminary planning."

    "But that could cost - "

    "I don't care what it costs," Levine said. "The fact is, survival is possible, it has occurred in a variety of species from other genera, and it may be that there are survivals from the Cretaceous as well."

    "Fantasy," Malcolm said again, shaking his head. Levine paused, and stared at Malcolm. "Dr. Malcolm," he said, "I must say I'm very surprised at your attitude. You've just presented a thesis and I am offering you a chance to prove it. I would have thought You'd jump at the opportunity."

    " My jumping days are over," Malcolm said.

    "But instead of taking me up on this, you - "

    "I'm not interested in dinosaurs," Malcolm said.

    "But everyone is interested in dinosaurs."

    "Not me." He turned on his cane, and started to walk off.

    "By the way," Levine said. "What were you doing in Costa Rica? I heard you were there for almost a year."

    "I was lying in a hospital bed. They couldn't move me out of intensive care for six months. I Couldn't even get on a plane."

    "Yes," Levine said. "I know you got hurt. But what were you doing there in the first place? Weren't you looking for dinosaurs?"

    Malcolm squinted at him in the bright sun, and leaned on his cane. "No," he said. "I wasn't."

They were all three sitting at a small painted table in the corner of the Guadalupe Cafe, on the other side of the river. Sarah Harding drank Corona from the bottle, and watched the two men opposite her. Levine looked pleased to be with them, as if he had won some victory to be sitting at the table. Malcolm looked weary, like a parent who has spent too much time with a hyperactive child.

    "You want to know what I've heard?" Levine said. "I've heard that a couple of years back, a company named InGen genetically engineered some dinosaurs and put them on an island in Costa Rica. But something went wrong, a lot of people were killed, and the dinosaurs were destroyed. And now nobody will talk about it, because of some legal angle. Nondisclosure agreements or something. And the Costa Rican government doesn't want to hurt tourism. So nobody will talk. That's what I've heard."

    Malcolm stared at him. "And you believe that?"

    "Not at first, I didn't," Levine said. "But the thing is, I keep hearing it. The rumors keep floating around. Supposedly you, and Alan Grant, and a bunch of other people were there."

    "Did you ask Grant about it?"

    "I asked him, last year, at a conference in Peking. He said it was absurd."

    Malcolm nodded slowly.

    "Is that what you say?" Levine asked, drinking his beer. "I mean, you know Grant, don't you?"

    "No. I never met him."

    Levine was watching Malcolm closely. "So it's not true?"

    Malcolm sighed. "Are you familiar with the concept of a technomyth? It was developed by Geller at Princeton. Basic thesis is that we've lost all the old myths, Orpheus and Eurydice and Perseus and Medusa. So we fill the gap with modern techno-myths. Geller listed a dozen or so. One is that an alien's living at a hangar at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Another is that somebody invented a carburetor that gets a hundred and fifty miles to the gallon, but the automobile companies bought the patent and are sitting on it. Then there's the story that the Russians trained children in ESP at a secret base in Siberia and these kids can kill people anywhere in the world with their thoughts. The story that the lines in Nazca, Peru, are an alien spaceport. That the CIA released the AIDS virus to kill homosexuals. That Nikola Tesla discovers an incredible energy source but his notes are lost. That in Istanbul there's a tenth-century drawing that shows the earth from space. That the Stanford Research Institute found a guy whose body glows in the dark. Get the picture?"

    "You're saying InGen's dinosaurs are a myth," Levine said.

    "Of course they are. They have to be. Do you think it's possible to genetically engineer a dinosaur?"

    "The experts all tell me It's not."

    "And they're right," Malcolm said. He glanced at Harding, as if for confirmation. She said nothing, just drank her beer.

    In fact, Harding knew something more about these dinosaur rumors. Once after surgery, Malcolm had been delirious, mumbling nonsense from the anaesthesia and pain medication. And he had been seemingly fearful, twisting in the bed, repeating the names of several kinds of dinosaurs. Harding had asked the nurse about it; she said he was like that after every operation. The hospital staff assumed it was a drug-induced fantasy - yet it seemed to Harding that Malcolm was reliving some terrifying actual experience. The feeling was heightened by the slangy, familiar way Malcolm referred to the dinosaurs: he called them "raptors" and "compys" and "trikes." And he seemed especially fearful of the raptors.

    Later, when he was back home, she had asked him about his delirium. He had just shrugged it off, making a bad joke - "At least I didn't mention other women, did I?" And then he made some comment about having been a dinosaur nut as a kid, and how illness made you regress. His whole attitude was elaborately indifferent, as if it were all unimportant; she had the distinct feeling he was being evasive. But she wasn't inclined to push it; those were the days when she was in love with him, her attitude indulgent.

    Now he was looking at her in a questioning way, as if to ask if she was going to contradict him. Harding just raised an eyebrow, and stared back. He must have his reasons. She could wait him out.

    Levine leaned forward across the table toward Malcolm and said, "So the InGen story is entirely untrue?"

    "Entirely untrue," Malcolm said, nodding gravely. "Entirely untrue."

Malcolm had been denying the speculation for three years. By now he was getting good at it; his weariness was no longer affected but genuine. In fact, he had been a consultant to International Genetic Technologies of Palo Alto in the summer of 1989, and he had made a trip to Costa Rica for them, which had turned out disastrously. In the aftermath, everyone involved had moved quickly to quash the story. InGen wanted to limit its liability. The Costa Rican government wanted to preserve its reputation as a tourist paradise. And the individual scientists had been bound by nondisclosure agreements, abetted later by generous grants to continue their silence. In Malcolm's case, two years of medical bills had been paid by the company.

    Meanwhile, InGen's island facility in Costa Rica had been destroyed. There were no longer any living creatures on the island. The company had hired the eminent Stanford professor George Baselton, a biologist and essayist whose frequent television appearances had made him a popular authority on scientific subjects. Baselton claimed to have visited the island, and had been tireless in denying rumors that extinct animals had ever existed there. His derisive snort, "Saber-toothed tigers, indeed!" was particularly effective.

    As time passed, interest in the story waned. InGen was long since bankrupt; the principal investors in Europe and Asia had taken their losses. Although the company's physical assets, the buildings and lab equipment, would be sold piecemeal, the core technology that had been developed would, they decided, never be sold. In short, the InGen chapter was closed.

    There was nothing more to say.

"So there's no truth to it," Levine said, biting into his green-corn tamale. "To tell you the truth, Dr. Malcolm, that makes me feel better."

    "Why?" Malcolm said.

    "Because it means that the remnants that keep turning up in Costa Rica must be real. Real dinosaurs. I've got a friend from Yale down there, a field biologist, and he says he's seen them. I believe him."

    Malcolm shrugged. "I doubt," he said, "that any more animals will turn up in Costa Rica."

    "It's true there haven't been any for almost a year now. But if more show up, I'm going down there. And in the interim, I am going to outfit an expedition. I've been giving a lot of thought to how it should be done. I think the special vehicles could be built and ready in a year. I've already talked to Doc Thorne about it. Then I'll assemble a team, perhaps including Dr. Harding here, or a similarly accomplished naturalist, and some graduate students...."

    Malcolm listened, shaking his head.

    "You think I'm wasting my time," Levine said. "I do, yes."

    "But suppose - just suppose - that animals start to show up again."

    "Never happen."

    "But suppose they did?" Levine said. "Would you be interested in helping me? To plan an expedition?"

    Malcolm finished his meal, and pushed the plate aside. He stared at Levine.

    "Yes," he said finally. "If animals started showing up again, I would be interested in helping you."

    "Great!" Levine said. "That's all I wanted to know."

Outside, in the bright sunlight on Guadalupe Street, Malcolm walked with Sarah toward Malcolm's battered Ford sedan. Levine climbed into a bright-red Ferrari, waved cheerfully, and roared off.

    "You think it will ever happen?" Sarah Harding said. "That these, ah, animals will start showing up again?"

    "No," Malcolm said, "I am quite sure they never will."

    "You sound hopeful."

    He shook his head, and got awkwardly in the car, swinging his bad leg tinder the steering wheel. Harding climbed in beside him. He glanced at her, and turned the key in the ignition. They drove back to the Institute.

The following day, she went back to Africa. During the next eighteen months, she had a rough sense of Levine's progress, since from time to time he called her with some question about field protocols, or vehicle tires, or the best anaesthetic to use on animals in. the wild. Sometimes she got a call from Doc Thorne, who was building the vehicles. He usually sounded harassed.

    From Malcolm she heard nothing at all, although he sent her a card on her birthday. It arrived a month late. He had scrawled at the bottom, "Have a happy birthday. Be glad you're nowhere near him. He's driving me crazy."

FIRST CONFIGURATION

"In the conservative region far from the chaotic edge,

individual elements coalesce slowly, showing no clear pattern."

IAN MALCOLM

Aberrant Forms

In the fading afternoon light, the helicopter skimmed low along the coast, following the line where the dense jungle met the beach. The last of the fishing villages had flashed by beneath them ten minutes ago. Now there was only impenetrable Costa Rican jungle, mangrove swamps, and mile after mile of deserted sand. Sitting beside the pilot, Marty, Guitierrez stared out the window as the coastline swept past. There weren't even any roads in this area, at least none that Guitierrez could see.

    Guitierrez was a quiet, bearded American of thirty-six, a field biologist who had lived for the last eight years in Costa Rica. He had originally come to study toucan speciation in the rain forest, but stayedon as a consultant to the Reserva Biológica de Carara, the national park in the north. He clicked the radio mike and said to the pilot, "How much farther?"

    "Five minutes, Señior Guitierrez."

    Guitierrez turned and said, "It won't be long now." But the tall man folded up in the back seat of the helicopter didn't answer, or even acknowledge that he had been spoken to. He merely sat, with his hand on his chin, and stared frowning out the window.

    Richard Levine wore sun-faded field khakis, and an Australian slouch hat pushed low over his head. A battered pair of binoculars hung around his neck. But despite his rugged appearance, Levine conveyed an air of scholarly absorption. Behind his wire-frame spectacles, his features were sharp, his expression intense and critical as he looked out the window.

    "What is this place?"

    "It's called Rojas."

    "So we're far south?"

    "Yes. Only about fifty miles from the border with Panama."

    Levine stared at the jungle. "I don't see any roads," he said. "How was the thing found?"

    "Couple of campers," Guitierrez said. "They came in by boat, landed on the beach."

    "When was that?"

    Yesterday. They took one look at the thing, and ran like hell."

    Levine nodded. With his long limbs folded up, his hands tucked under his chin, he looked like a praying mantis. That had been his nickname in graduate school; in part because of his appearance - and in part because of his tendency to bite off the head of anyone who disagreed with him.

    Guitierrez said, "Been to Costa Rica before?"

    "No. First time," Levine said. And then he gave an irritable wave of his hand, as 'if he didn't want to be bothered with small talk.

    Guitierrez smiled. After all these years, Levine had not changed at all. He was still one of the most brilliant and irritating men in science. The two had been fellow graduate Students at Yale, until Levine quit the doctoral program to get his degree in comparative zoology instead. Levine announced he had no interest in the kind of contemporary field research that so attracted Guitierrez. With characteristic contempt, he had once described Guitierrez's work as "collecting parrot crap from around the world."

    The truth was that Levine - brilliant and fastidious - was drawn to the past, to the world that no longer existed. And he studied this world with obsessive intensity. He was famous for his photographic memory, his arrogance, his sharp tongue, and the unconcealed pleasure he took in pointing out the errors of colleagues. As a colleague once said, "Levine never forgets a bone - and he never lets you forget it, either."

    Field researchers disliked Levine, and he returned the sentiment. He was at heart a man of detail, a cataloguer of animal life, and he was happiest poring over museum collections, reassigning species, rearranging display skeletons. He disliked the dust and inconvenience of life in the field. Given his choice, Levine would never leave the Museum. But it was his fate to live in the greatest period of discovery in the history of paleontology. The number of known species of dinosaurs had doubled in the last twenty years, and new species were now being described at the rate of one every seven weeks, Thus Levine's worldwide reputation forced him to continually travel around the World, inspecting new finds, and rendering his expert opinion to researchers who were annoyed to admit that they needed it.

    "Where'd you come from?" Gtiitierrez asked him.

    "Mongolia," Levine said. "I was at the Flaming Cliffs, in the Gobi Desert, three hours out of Ulan Bator."

    "Oh? What's there?"

    "John Roxton's got a dig. He found an incomplete skeleton he thought might be a new species of Velociraptor, and wanted me to have a look."

    "And?"

    Levine shrugged. "Roxton never really did know anatomy, He's an enthusiastic fund-raiser, but if he actually uncovers something, he's incompetent to proceed."

    "You told him that?"

    "Why not? It's the truth."

    "And the skeleton?"

    "The skeleton wasn't a raptor at all," Levine said. "Metatarsals all wrong, pubis too ventral, ischium lacking a proper obturator, and the long bones much too light. As for the skull...." He rolled his eyes. "The palatal's too thick, antorbital fenestrae too rostra], distal carida too small - oh, it goes on and on. And the trenchant ungual's hardly present. So there we are. I don't know what Roxton could have been thinking. I suspect he actually has a subspecies of Stenonychosaurus, though I haven't decided for sure."

    "Stenonychosaurus?" Guitierrez said.

    "Small Triassic carnivore - two meters from pes to acetabtiltim. In point of fact, a rather ordinary theropod. And Roxton's find wasn't a particularly interesting example. Although there was one curious detail. The material included an integtimental artifact - an imprint of the dinosaur's skin. That in itself is not rare. There are perhaps a dozen good skin impressions obtained so far, mostly among the Hadrosauridae. But nothing like this. Because it was clear to me that this animal's skin had some very unusual characteristics not previously suspected in dinosaurs - "

    "Señores," the pilot said, interrupting them, "Juan Fernández Bay is ahead."

    Levine said, "Circle it first, can we?"

    Levine looked out the window, his expression intense again, the conversation forgotten. They were flying over jungle that extended up into the hills for miles, as far as they could see. The helicopter banked, circling the beach.

    "There it is now," Guitierrez said, pointing out the window.

The beach was a clean, curving white crescent, entirely deserted in the afternoon light. To the south, they saw a single dark mass in the sand. From the air, it looked like a rock, or perhaps a large clump of seaweed. The shape was amorphous, about five feet across. There were lots of footprints around it.

    "Who's been here?" Levine said, with a sigh.

    "Public Health Service people came out earlier today."

    "Did they do anything?" he said. "They touch it, disturb it in any way?

    "I can't say," Guitierrez said.

    "The Public Health Service," Levine repeated, shaking his head. "What do they know? You should never have let them near 'it, Marty."

    "Hey," Guitierrez said. "I don't run this country. I did the best I could. They wanted to destroy it before you even got here. At least I managed to keep it intact until you arrived. Although I don't know how long they'll wait."

    "Then we'd better get started," Levine said. He pressed the button on his mike. "Why are we still circling? We're losing light. Get down on the beach now. I want to see this thing firsthand."

Richard Levine ran across the sand toward the dark shape, his binoculars bouncing on his chest. Even from a distance, he could smell the stench of decay. And already he was logging his preliminary impressions. The carcass lay half-buried in the sand, surrounded by a thick cloud of flies. The skin was bloated with gas, which made identification difficult.

    He paused a few yards from the creature, and took out his camera. Immediately, the pilot of the helicopter came up alongside him, pushing his hand down. "No permitado."

    "What?"

    "I am sorry, señor. No pictures arc allowed."

    "Why the hell not?" Levine said. He turned to Guitierrez, who was trotting down the beach toward them. "Marty, why no pictures? This could be an important - "

    "No pictures," the pilot said again, and he pulled the camera out of Levine's hand.

    "Marty, this is crazy."

    "Just go ahead and make your examination," Guitierrcz said, and then he began speaking in Spanish to the Pilot, who answered sharply and angrily, waving his hands.

    Levine watched a moment, then turned away. The hell with this, he thought. They could argue forever. He hurried forward, breathing through his mouth. The odor became much stronger as he approached it. Although the carcass was large he noticed there were no birds, rats, or other scavengers feeding on it. There were only flies - flies so dense they covered the skin, and obscured the outline of the dead animal.

    Even so, it was clear that this had been a substantial creature, roughly the size of a cow or horse before the bloat began to enlarge it further. The dry skin had cracked in the sun and was now peeling upward, exposing the layer of runny, yellow subdermal fat beneath.

    Oof, it stunk! Levine winced. He forced himself closer, directing all his attention to the animal.

    Although it was the size of a cow, it was clearly not a mammal. The skin was hairless. The original skin color appeared to have been green, with a suggestion of darker striations running through it. The epidermal surface was pebbled in polygonal tubercles of varying sizes, the pattern reminiscent of the skin of a lizard. This texture varied in different parts of the animal, the pebbling larger and less distinct on the underbelly. There were prominent skin folds at the neck, shoulder, and hip joints - again, like a lizard.

    But the carcass was large. Levine estimated the animal had originally weighed about a hundred kilograms, roughly two hundred and twenty pounds, No lizards grew that large anywhere in the world, except the Komodo dragons of Indonesia. Varanus komodoensis were nine-foot-long monitor lizards, crocodile-size carnivores that ate goats and pigs, and on occasion human beings as well. But there were no monitor lizards anywhere in the New World. Of course, it was conceivable that this was one of the Iguanidae. Iguanas were found all over South America, and the marine iguanas grew quite large. Even so, this would be a record-size animal.

    Levine moved slowly around the carcass, toward the front of the animal. No, he thought, it wasn't a lizard. The carcass lay on its side, its left rib cage toward the sky. Nearly half of it was buried; the row of protruberances that marked the dorsal spinous processes of the backbone were just a few inches above the sand. The long neck was curved, the head hidden beneath the bulk of the body like a duck's head under feathers. Levine saw one forelimb, which seemed small and weak. The distal appendage was buried in sand. He would dig that out and have a look at it, but he wanted to take pictures before he disturbed the specimen in situ.

    In fact, the more Levine saw of this carcass, the more carefully he thought he should proceed. Because one thing was clear - this was a very rare, and possibly unknown, animal. Levine felt simultaneously excited and cautious. If this discovery was as significant as he was beginning to think it was, then it was essential that it be properly documented.

    Up the beach, Guitierrez was still shouting at the pilot, who kept shaking his head stubbornly. These banana-republic bureaucrats, Levine thought. Why shouldn't he take pictures? It couldn't harm anything. And it was vital to document the changing state of the creature.

    He heard a thumping, and looked up to see a second helicopter circling the bay, its dark shadow sliding across the sand. This helicopter was ambulance-white, with red lettering on the side. In the glare of the setting sun, he couldn't read it.

    He turned back to the carcass, noticing now that the hind leg of the animal was powerfully muscled, very different from the foreleg. It suggested that this creature walked upright, balanced on strong hind legs. Many lizards were known to stand upright, of course, but none so large as this. In point of fact, as Levine looked at the general shape of the carcass, he felt increasingly certain that this was not a lizard.

    He worked quickly now, for the light was fading and he had much to do. With every specimen, there were always two major questions to answer, both equally important. First, what was the animal? Second, why had it died?

    Standing by the thigh, he saw the epidermis was split open, no doubt from the gaseous subcutaneous buildup. But as Levine looked more closely, he saw that the split was in fact a sharp gash, and that it ran deep through the femorotibialis, exposing red muscle and pale bone beneath. He ignored the stench, and the white maggots that wriggled across the open tissues of the gash, because he realized that -

    "Sorry about all this," Guitierrez said, coming over. "But the pilot just refuses."

    The pilot was nervously following Guitierrez, standing beside him, watching carefully.

    "Marty," Levine said. "I really need to take pictures here."

    "I'm afraid you can't," Guitierrez said, with a shrtig.

    "It's important, Marty."

    "Sorry. I tried my best."

    Farther down the beach, the white helicopter landed, its whine diminishing. Men in uniforms began getting out.

    "Marty. What do you think this animal is?"

    "Well, I can only guess," Guitierrez said. "From the general dimensions I'd call it a previously unidentified iguana. It's extremely large, of course, and obviously not native to Costa Rica. My guess is this animal came from the Galdpagos, or one of the - "

    "No, Marty," Levine said. "It's not an iguana."

    "Before you say anything more," Guitierrez said, glancing at the pilot, "I think you ought to know that several previously unknown species of lizard have shown up in this area. Nobody's quite sure why. Perhaps it's due to the cutting of the rain forest, or some other reason. But new species are appearing. Several years ago, I began to see unidentified species of - "

    "Marty. It's not a damn lizard."

    Guitierrez blinked his eyes. "What are you saying? Of course it's a lizard."

    "I don't think so," Levine said.

    Guitierrez said, "You're probably just thrown off because of its size. The fact is, here in Costa Rica, we occasionally encounter these aberrant forms - "

    "Marty," Levine said coldly. "I am never thrown off "

    "Well, of course, I didn't mean that - "

    "And I am telling you, this is not a lizard," Levine said.

    "I'm sorry," Guitierrez said, shaking his head. "But I can't agree."

    Back at the white helicopter, the men were huddled together, putting on white surgical masks.

    "I'm not asking you to agree," Levine said. He turned back to the carcass. "The diagnosis is settled easily enough, all we need do is excavate the head, or for that matter any of the limbs, for example this thigh here, which I believe - "

    He broke off, and leaned closer. He peered at the back of the thigh.

    "What is it?" Guiltierrez said.

    "Give me your knife."

    "Why?" Guitierrez said.

    "Just give it to me."

    Guitierrez fished out his pocketknife, put the handle in Levine's outstretched hand. Levine peered steadily at the carcass. "I think you will find this interesting."

    "What?"

    "Right along the posterior dermal line, there is a - "

    Suddenly, they heard shouting on the beach, and looked up to see the men from the white helicopter running down the beach toward them. They carried tanks on their backs, and were shouting in Spanish.

    "What are they saying?" Levine asked, frowning.

    Guitierrez sighed. "They're saying to get back."

    "Tell them we're busy," Levine said, and bent over the carcass again.

    But the men kept shouting, and suddenly there was a roaring sound, and Levine looked up to see flamethrowers igniting, big red jets of flame roaring out in the evening light. He ran around the carcass toward the men, shouting, "No! No!"

    But the men paid no attention.

    He shouted, "No, this is a priceless - "

    The first of the uniformed men grabbed Levine, and threw him roughly to the sand.

    "What the hell are you doing?" Levine yelled, scrambling to his feet. But even as he said it, he saw it was too late, the first of the flames had reached the carcass, blackening the skin, igniting the pockets of methane with a blue whump! The smoke from the carcass began to rise thickly into the sky.

    "Stop it! Stop it!" Levine turned to Guitierrez. "Make them stop it!"

    But Guitierrez was not moving, he was staring at the carcass. Consumed by flames, the torso crackled and the fat sputtered, and then as the skin burned away, the black, flat ribs of the skeleton were revealed, and then the whole torso turned, and suddenly the neck of the animal swung up, surrounded by flames, moving as the skin contracted. And inside the flames Levine saw a long pointed snout, and rows of sharp predatory teeth, and hollow eye sockets, the whole thing burning like some medieval dragon rising in flames up into the sky.

San José

Levine sat in the bar of the San José airport, nursing a beer, waiting for his plane back to the States. Guitierrez sat beside him at a small table, not saying much. An awkward silence had fallen for the last few minutes. Guitierrez stared at Levine's backpack, on the floor by his feet. It was specially constructed of dark-green Gore-Tex, with extra pockets on the outside for all the electronic gear.

    "Pretty nice pack," Guitierrez said. "Where'd you get that, anyway? Looks like a Thorne pack."

    Levine sipped his beer. "It is."

    "Nice," Guitierrez said, looking at it. "What've you got there in the top flap, a satellite phone? And a GPS? Boy, what won't they think of next. Pretty slick. Must have cost you a - "

    "Marty," Levine said, in an exasperated tone. "Cut the crap. Are you going to tell me, or not?"

    "Tell you what?"

    "I want to know what the hell's going on here."

    "Richard, look, I'm sorry if you - "

    "No," Levine said, cutting him off. "That was a very important specimen on that beach, Marty, and it was destroyed. I don't understand why you let it happen."

    Guitierrez sighed. He looked around at the tourists at the other tables and said, "This has to be in confidence, okay?"

    "All right."

    "It's a big problem here."

    "What is."

    "There have been, uh...aberrant forms...turning up on the coast ever so often. It's been going on for several years now."

    "'Aberrant forms?"' Levine repeated, shaking his head in disbelief

    "That's the official term for these specimens," Guitierrez said. "No one in the government is willing to be more precise. It started about five years ago. A number of animals were discovered up in the mountains, near a remote agricultural station that was growing test varieties of soy beans."

    "Soy beans," Levine repeated.

    Guitierrez nodded. "Apparently these animals are attracted to beans, and certain grasses. The assumption is that they have a great need for the amino acid lysine in their diets. But nobody is really sure. Perhaps they just have a taste for certain crops - "

    "Marty," Levine said. "I don't care if they have a taste for beer and pretzels. The only important question is: where did the animals come from?"

    "Nobody knows," Guitierrez said.

    Levine let that pass, for the moment. "What happened to those other animals?"

    "They were all destroyed. And to my knowledge, no others were found for years afterward. But now it seems to be starting again. In the last year, we have found the remains of four more animals, including the one you saw today."

    "And what was done?"

    "The, ah, aberrant forms are always destroyed. Just as you saw. From the beginning, the government's taken every possible step to make sure nobody finds out about it. A few years back, some North American journalists began reporting there was something wrong on one island, Isla Nublar. Menéndez invited a bunch of journalists down for a special tour of the island - and proceeded to fly them to the wrong island. They never knew the difference. Stuff like that. I mean, the government's very serious about this."

    "Why?"

    "They're worried."

    "Worried? Why should they be worried about - "

    Guitierrez held up his hand, shifted in his chair, moved closer. "Disease, Richard."

    "Disease?"

    "Yeah. Costa Rica has one of the best health-care systems in the world," Guitierrez said. "The epidemiologists have been tracking some weird type of encephalitis that seems to be on the increase, particularly along the coast."

    "Encephalitis'? Of what origin? Viral?"

    Guitierrez shook his head. "No causative agent has been found."

    "Marty..."

    "I'm telling you, Richard. Nobody knows. It's not a virus, because antibody titres don't go up, and white-cell differentials don't change. It's not bacterial, because nothing has ever been cultered. It's a complete mystery. All the epidemiologists know is that it seems to affect primarily rural farmers: people who are around animals and livestock. And it's a true encephalitis-splitting headaches, mental confusion, fever, delirium."

    "Mortality?"

    "So far it seems to be self-limited, lasts about three weeks. But even so it's got the government worried. This country is dependent on tourism, Richard. Nobody wants talk of unknown diseases."

    "So they think the encephalitis is related to these, ah, aberrant forms?"

    He shrugged. "Lizards carry lots of viral diseases," Guitierrez said. "They're a known vector. So it's not unreasonable, there might be a connection."

    "But you said this isn't a viral disease."

    "Whatever it is. They think it's related."

    Levine said, "All the more reason to find out where these lizards are coming from. Surely they must have searched..."

    "Searched?" Guiiticrrez said, with a laugh. "Of course they've searched. They've gone over every square inch of this country, again and again. They've sent out dozens of search parties - I've led several myself. They've done aerial surveys. They've had overflights of the jungle. They've had overflights of the offshore islands. That in itself is a big job. There are quite a few islands, you know, particularly along the west coast. Hell, they've even searched the ones that are privately owned."

    "Are there privately owned islands?" Levine asked.

    "A few. Three or four. Like Isla Nublar - it was leased to an American company, InGen, for years."

    "But you said that island was searched..."

    "Thoroughly searched. Nothing there."

    "And the others?"

    "Well, let's see," Guitierrez said, ticking them off on his fingers. "There's Isla Talamanca, on the east coast; they've got a Club Med there. There's Sorna, on the west coast; it's leased to a German mining company. And there's Morazan, up north; it's actually owned by a wealthy Costa Rican family. And there may be another island I've forgotten about."

    "And the searches found what?"

    "Nothing," Guitierrez said. "They've found nothing at all. So the assumption is that the animals are coming from some location deep in the jungle. And that's why we haven't been able to find it so far."

    Levine grunted. "In that case, lots of luck,"

    "I know," Guitierrez said. "Rain forest is an incredibly good environment for concealment. A search party could pass within ten yards of a large animal and never see it. And even the most advanced remote sensing technology doesn't help much, because there are multiple layers to penetrate-clouds, tree canopy, lower-level flora. There's just no way around it: almost anything could be hiding in the rain forest. Anyway," he said, "the government's frustrated. And, of course, the government is not the only interested party."

    Levine looked up sharply. "Oh?"

    "Yes. For some reason, there's been a lot of interest in these animals."

    "What sort of interest?" Levine said, as casually as he could.

    "Last fall, the government issued a permit to a team of botanists from Berkeley to do an aerial survey of the jungle canopy in the central highlands. The survey had been going on for a month when a dispute arose a bill for aviation fuel, or something like that. Anyway, a bureaucrat in San José called Berkeley to complain. And Berkeley said they'd never heard of this survey team. Meantime, the team fled the country."

    "So nobody knows who they really were?"

    "No'. Then last winter, a couple of Swiss geologists showed up to collect gas samples from offshore islands, as part of a study, they said, of volcanic activity in Central America. The offshore islands are all volcanic, and most of them are still active to some degree, so it seemed like a reasonable request. But it turned out the 'geologists' really worked for an American genetics company called Biosyn, and they were looking for, uh, large animals on the islands."

    "Why would a biotech company be interested?" Levine said. "it makes no sense."

    "Maybe not to you and me," Guitierrez said, "but Biosyn's got a particularly unsavory reputation. Their head of research is a guy named Lewis Dodgson."

    "Oh yeah," Levine said. "I know. He's the guy who ran that rabies vaccine test in Chile a few years back. The one where they exposed farmers to rabies but didn't tell them they were doing it."

    "That's him. He also started test-marketing a genetically engineered potato in supermarkets without telling anybody they were altered. Gave kids low-grade diarrhea; couple of them ended up in the hospital. After that, the company had to hire George Baselton to fix their image."

    "Seems like everybody hires Baselton," Levine said,

    Guitierrez shrugged. "The big-name university professors consult, these days. It's part of the deal. And Baselton is Regis Professor of Biology. The company needed him to clean up their mess, because Dodgson has a habit of breaking the law. Dodgson has people on his payroll all around the world. Steals other companies' research, the whole bit. They say Biosyn's the only genetics company with more lawyers than scientists."

    "And why were they interested in Costa Rica?" Levine asked.

    Guitierrez shrugged. "I don't know, but the whole attitude toward research has changed, Richard. It's very noticeable here. Costa Rica has one of the richest ecologies in the world. Half a million species in twelve distinct environmental habitats. Five percent of all the species on the planet are represented here. This country has been a biological research center for years, and I can tell you, things have changed. In the old days, the people who came here were dedicated scientists with a passion to learn about something for its own sake-howler monkeys, or polistine wasps, or the sombrilla plant. These people had chosen their field because they cared about it. They certainly weren't going to get rich. But now, everything in the biosphere is potentially valuable. Nobody knows where the next drug is coming from, so drug companies fund all sorts of research. Maybe a bird egg has a protein that makes it waterproof. Maybe a spider produces a peptide that inhibits blood clotting. Maybe the waxy surface of a fern contains a painkiller. It happens often enough that attitudes toward research have changed. People aren't studying the natural world any more, they're mining it. It's a looter mentality. Anything new or unknown is automatically of interest, because it might have value. It might be worth a fortune."

    Guitierrez drained his beer. "The world," he said, is turned upside down. And the fact is that a lot of people want to know what these aberrant animals represent - and where they come from."

    The loudspeaker called Levine's flight. Both men stood up from the table. Guiitierrez said, "You'll keep all this to yourself? I mean, what you saw today."

    "To be quite honest," Levine said, "I don't know what I saw today. It could have been anything."

    Guitierrez grinned. "Safe flight, Richard."

    "Take care, Marty."

Departure

His backpack slung over his shoulder, Levine walked toward the departure lounge. He turned to wave goodbye to Guitierrez, but his friend was already heading out the door, raising his arm to wave for a taxi. Levine shrugged, turned back.

    Directly ahead was the Customs desk, travelers lined up to have their passports stamped. He was booked on a night flight to San Francisco, with a long stopover in Mexico City; not many people were queuing up. He probably had time to call his office, and leave word for his secretary, Linda, that he would be on the flight; and perhaps, he thought, he should also call Malcolm. Looking around, he saw a row of phones marked ICT TELEFONOS INTFRNATIONAL along the wall to his right, but there were only a few, and all were in use. He had better use the satellite phone in his backpack, he thought, as he swung the pack off his shoulder, and perhaps it would be-

    He paused, frowning.

    He looked back at the wall.

    Four people were using the phones. The first was a blonde woman in shorts and a halter top, bouncing a young sunburned child in her arms as she talked. Next to her stood a bearded man in a safari jacket, who glanced repeatedly at his gold Rolex watch. Then there was a grayhaired, grandmotherly woman talking in Spanish, while her two fullgrown sons stood by, nodding emphatically.

    And the last person was the helicopter pilot. He had removed his uniform jacket, and was standing in short sleeves and tie. He was turned away, facing the wall, shoulders hunched.

    Levine moved closer, and heard the pilot speaking in English. Levine set his pack down and beiit over it, pretending to adjust the straps while he listened. The pilot was still turned away from him.

    He heard the pilot say, "No, no, Professor. It is not that way. No. Then there was a pause. "No," the pilot said. "I am telling to you, no. I am sorry, Professor Baselton, but this is not known, It is an island, but which one...We must wait again for more. No, he leaves tonight. No, I think he does not know anything, and no pictures. No. I understand. Adiós.

    Levine ducked his head as the pilot walked briskly toward the LACSA desk at the other end of the airport.

    What the hell? he thought.

    It is an island, but which one...

    How did they know it was an island? Levine himself was still not sure of that. And he had been working intensively on these finds, day and night, trying to put it together. Where they had come from. Why it was happening.

    He walked around the corner, out of sight, and pulled out the little satellite phone. He dialed it quickly, calling a number in San Francisco.

    The call went through, rapidly clicking as it linked with the satellite. It began to ring. There was a beep. An electronic voice said, "Please enter your access code."

    Levine punched in a six-digit number.

    There was another beep. The electronic voice said, "Leave your message."

    "I'm calling," Levine said, "with the results of the trip. Single specimen, not in good shape. Location: BB-17 on your map. That's far south, which fits all of our hypotheses. I wasn't able to make a precise identification before they burned the specimen. But my guess is that it was an ornitholestes. As you know, this animal is not on the list -a highly sigificant finding."

    He glanced around, but no one was near him, no one was paying attention. "Furthermore, the lateral femur was cut in a deep gash. This is extremely disturbing." He hesitated, not wanting to say too much. "And I am sending back a sample that requires close examination. I also think some other people are interested. Anyway, whatever is going on down here is new, Ian. There haven't been any specimens for over a year, and now they're showing up again. Something new is happening. And we don't understand it at all."

    Or do we? Levine thought. He pressed the disconnect, turned the phone off, and replaced it in the other pocket of his backpack. Maybe, he thought, we know more than we realize. He looked thoughtfully toward the departure gate. It was time to catch his flight.

Palo Alto

At 2 a.m., Ed James pulled into the nearly deserted parking lot of the Marie Callender's on Carter Road. The black BMW was already there, parked near the entrance. Through the windows, he could see Dodgson sitting inside at a booth, his bland features frowning. Dodgson was never in a good mood. Right now he was talking to the heavyset man alongside him, and glancing at his watch. The heavyset man was Baselton. The professor who appeared on television. James always felt relieved whenever Baselton was there. Dodgson gave him the creeps, but it was hard to imagine Baselton involved in anything shady.

    James turned off the ignition and twisted the rearview mirror so he could see as he buttoned his shirt collar and pulled up his tie. He glimpsed his face in the mirror-a disheveled, tired man with a two-day stubble of beard. What the hell, he thought. Why shouldn't he look tired? It was the middle of the fucking night.

    Dodgson always scheduled his meetings in the middle of the night, and always at this same damn Marie Callender restaurant. James never understood why; the coffee was awful. But then, there was a lot he didn't understand.

    He picked up the manila envelope, and got out of the car, slamming the door. He headed for the entrance, shaking his head. Dodgson had been paying him five hundred dollars a day for weeks now, to follow a bunch of scientists around. At first, James had assumed it was some sort of industrial espionage. But none of the scientists worked for industry; they held university appointments, in pretty dull fields. Like that paleobotanist Sattler whose specialty was prehistoric pollen grains. James had sat through one of her lectures at Berkeley, and had barely been able to stay awake. Slide after slide of little pale spheres that looked like cotton balls, while she nattered on about polysaccharide bonding angles and the Campanian-Maastrichtlan boundary. Jesus, it was boring.

    Certainly not worth five hundred dollars a day, he thought. He went inside, blinking in the light, and walked over to the booth. He sat down, nodded to Dodgson and Baselton, and raised his hand to order coffee from the waitress.

    Dodgson glared at him. "I haven't got all night," he said. "Let's get started."

    "Right," James said, lowering his hand. "Fine, sure." He opened the envelope, began pulling out sheets and photos, handing them across the table to Dodgson as he talked.

    "Alan Grant: paleontologist at Montana State. At the moment he's on leave of absence and is now in Paris, lecturing on the latest dinosaur finds. Apparently he has some new ideas about tyrannosaurs being scavengers, and - "

    "Never mind," Dodgson said. "Go on."

    "Ellen Sattler Reiman," James said, pushing across a photo. "Botanist, used to be involved with Grant. Now married to a physicist at Berkeley and has a young son and daughter. She lectures half-time at the University. Spends the rest of her time at home, because - "

    "Go on, go on."

    "Well. Most of the rest are deceased. Donald Gennaro, lawyer...died of dysentery on a business trip. Dennis Nedry, Integrated Computer Systems...also deceased. John Hammond, who started International Genetic Technologies...died while visiting the company's research facility in Costa Rica. Hammond had his grandchildren with him at the time; the kids live with their mother back east and - "

    "Anybody contact them? Anybody from InGen?"

    "No, no contact. The boy's started college and the girl is in prep school. And InGen filed for Chapter 11 protection after Hammond died. It's been in the courts ever since. The hard assets are finally being sold off. During the last two weeks, as a matter of fact."

    Baselton spoke for the first time. "Is Site B involved in that sale?"

    James looked blank. "Site B?"

    "Yes. Has anybody talked to you about Site B?"

    "No, I've never heard of it before. What is it?"

    "If you hear anything about Site B," Baselton said, "we want to know."

    Sitting beside Baselton in the booth, Dodgson thumbed through the pictures and data sheets, then tossed them aside impatiently. He looked up at James. "What else have you got?"

    "That's all, Dr. Dodgson."

    "That's all?" Dodgson said. "What about Malcolm? And what about Levine? Are they still friends?"

    James consulted his notes. "I'm not sure."

    Baselton frowned. "Not sure?" he said. "What do you mean, you're not sure?"

    "Malcolm met Levine at the Santa Fe Institute," James said. "They spent time together there, a couple of years ago. But Malcolm hasn't gone back to Santa Fe recently. He's taken a visiting lectureship at Berkeley in the biology department. He teaches mathematical models of evolution. And he seems to have lost contact with Levine."

    "They have a falling out?"

    "Maybe. I was told they argued about Levine's expedition."

    "What expedition?" Dodgson said, leaning forward.

    "Levine's been planning some kind of expedition for a year or so He's ordered special vehicles from a company called Mobile Field Systems. It's a small operation in Woodside, run by a guy named Jack Thorne. Thorne outfits Jeeps and trucks for scientists doing field research. Scientists in Africa and Sichuan and Chile all swear by them."

    "Malcolm knows about this expedition?"

    "He Must. He's gone to Thorne's place, occasionally. Every month or so. And of course Levine's been going there almost every day, That's how he got thrown in jail."

    "Thrown in jail?" Baselton said.

    "Yeah," James said, glancing at his notes. "Let's see. February tenth, Levine was arrested for driving a hundred and twenty in a fifteen zone. Right in front of Woodside Junior High. The judge impounded his Ferrari, yanked his license, and gave him community service. Basically ordered him to teach a class at the school."

    Baselton smiled. "Richard Levine teaching junior high. I'd love to see that."

    "He's been pretty conscientious. Of course he's spending time in Woodside, anyway, with Thorne. That is, until he left the country."

    "When did he leave the country?" Dodgson said.

    "Two days ago. He went to Costa Rica. Short trip, he was due back early this morning."

    And where is he now?"

    "I don't know. And I'm afraid, uh, it's going to be hard to find out."

    "Why is that?"

     James hesitated, coughed, "Because he was on the passenger manifest of the flight from Costa Rica - but he wasn't on the plane when it landed. My contact in Costa Rica says he checked out of his hotel in San José before the flight, and never went back. Didn't take any other flight out of the city. So, uh, for the moment, I'm afraid that Richard Levine has disappeared."

There was a long silence. Dodgson sat back in the booth, hissing between his teeth. He looked at Baselton, who shook his head. Dodgson very carefully picked up all the sheets of paper, tapped them on the table, making a neat stack. He slipped them back into the manila envelope, and handed the envelope to James.

    "Now listen, you stupid son of a bitch," Dodgson said. "There's only one thing I want from you now. It's very simple. Are you listening?"

    James swallowed. "I'm listening."

    Dodgson leaned across the table. "Find him," he said.

Berkeley

In his cluttered Office, Malcolm looked up from his desk as his assistant, Beverly, came into the room. She was followed by a man from DHL, carrying a small box.

    "I'm sorry to disturb you, Dr. Malcolm, but you have to sign these forms....It's that sample from Costa Rica."

    Malcolm stood, and walked around the desk. He didn't use his cane. In recent weeks, he had been working steadily to walk without the cane. He still had occasional pain in his leg, but he was determined to make progress. Even his physical therapist, a perpetually cheery woman named Cindy, had commented on it. "Gee, after all these years, suddenly you're motivated, Dr. Malcolm," she had said. "What's going on?"

    "Oh, you know," Malcolm had said to her. "Can't rely on a cane forever.  

    The truth was rather different. Confronted by Levine's relentless enthusiasm for the lost-world hypothesis, his excited telephone calls at all hours of the day and night, Malcolm had begun to reconsider his own views. And he had come to believe that it was quite possible - even probable -that extinct animals existed in a remote, previously unsuspected location. Malcolm had his own reasons for thinking so, which he had only hinted at to Levine.

    But the possibility of another island location was what led him to walk unaided. He wanted to prepare for a future visit to this island. And so he had begun to make the effort, day after day.

    He and Levine had narrowed their search down to a string of islands along the Costa Rican coast, and Levine was as always very intense in his excitement. But to Malcolm it remained hypothetical.

    He refused to get excited until there was hard evidence - photographs, or actual tissue samples - to demonstrate the existence of new animals. And so far, Malcolm had seen nothing at all. He was not sure whether he was disappointed or relieved.

    But in any case, Levine's sample had arrived.

Malcolm took the clipboard from the delivery man and quickly signed the top form: "Delivery of Excluded Materials / Samples: Biological Research."

    The delivery man said, "You have to check the boxes, sir."

    Malcolm looked at the list of questions running down the page, with a check box beside each. Was the specimen alive. Was the specimen cultures of bacteria, fungi, viruses, or protozoa. Was the specimen registered tinder an established research protocol. Was the specimen contagious. Was the specimen taken from a farm or animal-husbandry site. Was the specimen plant matter, propagative seeds, or bulbs. Was the specimen insect or insect-related....

    He checked off "No' to everything.

    "And the next page, too, sir," the delivery man said. He was looking around the office, at the stacks of papers heaped untidily about, the maps on the walls with the colored pins stuck in them. "You do medical research here?"

    Malcolm flipped the page, scrawled his signature on the next form.

    "No."

    "And one more, sir..."

    The third form was a release of liability to the carrier. Malcolm signed it as well. The delivery man said, "Have a good day," and left.

    Immediately Malcolm sagged, resting his weight on the edge of the desk. He winced.

    "Still hurt?" Beverly said. She took the specimen to the side table, pushed some papers away, and began to unwrap it.

    "I'm okay." He looked over at the cane, resting beside his chair behind the desk. Then he took a breath, and crossed the room, slowly.

    Beverly had the wrapping off the package, revealing a small stainless-steel cylinder the size of his fist. A triple-bladed biohazard sign was taped across the screwtop lid. Attached to the cylinder was a second small canister with a metal valve; it contained the refrigerant gas.

    Malcolm swung the light over the cylinder, and said, "Let's see what be was so excited about." He broke the taped seal and unscrewed the lid. There was a hiss of gas, and a faint white puff of condensation. The exterior of the cylinder frosted over.

    Peering in, he saw a plastic baggie, and a sheet of paper. He up-ended the cylinder, dumping the contents onto the table. The baggie contained a ragged piece of greenish flesh about two inches square, with a small green plastic tag attached to it. He held it up to the light, examined it with a magnifying glass, then set it down again. He looked at the green skin, the pebbled texture.

    Maybe, he thought.

    Maybe...

    "Beverly," he said, "call Elizabeth Gelman, over at the zoo. Tell her I have something I want her to look at. And tell her it's confidential."

    Beverly nodded, and went out of the room to phone. Alone, Malcolm unrolled the strip of paper that had come with the sample. It was a piece of paper torn from a yellow legal pad. In block printing, it said:

I WAS RIGHT AND YOU WERE WRONG.

    Malcolm frowned. That son of a bitch, he thought. "Beverly? After you call Elizabeth, get Richard Levine at his office. I need to talk to him right away."

The Lost World

Richard Levine pressed his face to the warm rock cliff, and paused to catch his breath. Five hundred feet below, the ocean surged, waves thundering brilliant white against the black rocks. The boat that had brought him was already heading east again, a small white speck on the horizon. It had to return, for there was no safe harbor anywhere on this desolate, inhospitable island.

    For now, they were on their own.

    Levine took a deep breath, and looked down at Diego, twenty feet below him on the cliff face. Diego was burdened with the backpack that contained all their equipment, but he was young and strong. He smiled cheerfully, and nodded his head upward. "Have courage. It is not far now, señor.

    "I hope so," Levine said. When he had examined the cliff through binoculars from the boat, this had seemed like a good place to make the ascent. But in fact, the cliff face was nearly vertical, and incredibly dangerous because the volcanic rock was crumbling and friable.

    Levine raised his arms, fingers extending upward, reaching for the next handhold. He clung to the rock; small pebbles broke free and his hand slipped down. He gripped again, then pulled himself upward. He was breathing hard, from exertion and fear.

    "Just twenty meters more, señor," Diego said encouragingly. "You can do it."

    "I'm sure I can," Levine muttered. "Considering the alternative." As he neared the top of the cliff, the wind blew harder, whistling in his ears, tugging at his clothes. It felt as if it was trying to stick him away from the rock. Looking up, he saw the dense foliage that grew right to the edge of the cliff face.

    Almost there, he thought. Almost.

    And then, with a final heave, he pushed himself over the top and collapsed, rolling in soft wet ferns. Still gasping, he looked back and saw Diego come over lightly, easily; lie squatted on the mossy grass, and smiled. Levine turned away, staring at the huge ferns overhead, releasing the accumulated tension of the climb in long shuddering breaths. His legs burned fiercely.

    But no matter - he was here! Finally!

    He looked at the jungle around him. It was primary forest, undisturbed by the hand of man. Exactly as the satellite images had shown. Levine had been forced to rely on satellite photographs, because there were no maps available of private islands such as this one, This island existed as a kind of lost world, isolated in the midst of the Pacific Ocean.

    Levine listened to the sound of the wind, the rustle of the palm fronds that dripped water onto his face. And then he heard another sound, distant, like the cry of a bird, but deeper, more resonant. As he listened, he heard it again.

    A sharp sizzle nearby made him look over. Diego had struck a match, was raising it to light a cigarette. Quickly, Levine sat up, pushed the younger man's hand away, and shook his head, no.

    Diego frowned, puzzled.

    Levine put his finger to his lips.

    He pointed in the direction of the bird sound.

    Diego shrugged, his expression indifferent. He was unimpressed. He saw no reason for concern.

    That was because he didn't understand what they were up against, Levine thought, as he unzipped the dark-green backpack, and began to assemble the big Lindstradt rifle. The rifle had been specially manufactured for him in Sweden, and represented the latest in animal-control technology. He screwed the barrel into the stock, locked in the Fluger clip, checked the gas charge, and handed the rifle to Diego. Diego took it with another shrug.

    Meanwhile, Levine removed the black anodized Lindstradt pistol in its holster, and buckled it around his waist. He removed the pistol, checked the safety twice, and put the pistol back in the holster. Levine got to his feet, gestured for Diego to follow him. Diego zipped up the backpack, and shouldered it again.

    The two men started down the sloping hillside, away from the cliff. Almost immediately, their clothes were soaked from the wet foliage. They had no views; they were surrounded on all sides by dense jungle, and could see only a few yards ahead. The fronds of the ferns were enormous, as long and broad as a man's body, the plants twenty feet tall, with rough spiky stalks. And high above the ferns, a great canopy of trees blocked most of the sunlight. They moved in darkness, silently, on damp, spongy earth.

    Levine paused often, to consult his wrist compass. They were heading west, down a steep slope, toward the interior of the island. He knew that the island was the remains of an ancient volcanic crater, eroded and decomposed by centuries of weathering. The interior terrain consisted of a series of ridges that led down to the floor of the crater. But particularly here on the eastern side, the landscape was steep, rugged, and treacherous.

    The sense of isolation, of having returned to a primordial world, was palpable. Levine's heart pounded as he continued down the slope, across a marshy stream, and then up again. At the top of the next ridge, there was a break in the foliage, and he felt a welcome breeze. From his vantage point, he was able to see to the far side of the island, a rim of hard black cliff, miles away. Between here and the cliffs they saw nothing but gently undulating jungle.

    Standing beside him, Diego said, "Fantástico."

    Levine quickly shushed him.

    "But señor," he protested, pointing to the view. "We are alone here."

    Levine shook his head, annoyed. He had gone over all this with Diego, during the boat ride over. Once on the island, no speaking. No hair pomade, no cologne, no cigarettes. All food sealed tightly in plastic bags. Everything packed with great care. Nothing to produce a smell, or make a sound. He had warned Diego, again and again, of the importance of all these precautions.

    But now it was obvious that Diego had paid no attention. He didn't understand. Levine poked Diego angrily, and shook his head again.

    Diego smiled. "Señor, please. There are only birds here."

    At that moment, they heard a deep, rumbling sound, an unearthly cry that arose from somewhere in the forest below them. After a moment, the cry was answered, from another part of the forest.

    Diego's eyes widened.

    Levine mouthed: Birds?

    Diego was silent. He bit his lip, and stared out at the forest.

    To the South, they saw a place where the tops of the trees began to move, a whole section of forest that suddenly seemed to come alive, as if brushed by wind. But the rest of the forest was not moving. It was not the wind.

    Diego crossed himself quickly.

    They heard more cries, lasting nearly a minute, and then silence descended again.

    Levine moved off the ridge and headed down the jungle slope, going deeper into the interior.

He was moving forward quickly, looking at the ground, watching for snakes, when he heard a low whistle behind him. He turned and saw Diego pointing to the left.

    Levine doubled back, pushed through the fronds, and followed Diego as he moved south. In a few moments, they came upon two parallel tracks in the dirt, long since overgrown with grass and ferns, but clearly recognizable as an old Jeep trail, leading off into the jungle. Of course they would follow it. He knew their progress would be much faster on a road.

    Levine gestured, and Diego took off the backpack. It was Levine's turn; he shouldered the weight, adjusted the straps.

    In silence, they started down the road.

In places, the Jeep track was hardly recognizable, so thickly had the jungle grown back. Clearly, no one had used this road for many years, and the jungle was always ready to return.

    Behind him, Diego grunted, swore softly. Levine turned and saw Diego lifting his foot gingerly; he had stepped to mid-ankle in a pile of green animal-droppings. Levine went back..

    Diego scraped his boot clean on the stem of a fern. The droppings appeared to be composed of pale flecks of hay, mixed with green. The material was light and crumbly - dried, old. There was no smell.

    Levine searched the ground carefully, until he found the remainder of the original spoor. The droppings were well formed, twelve centimeters in diameter. Definitely left behind by some large herbivore.

    Diego was silent, but his eyes were wide.

    Levine shook his head, continued on. As long as they saw signs of herbivore, he wasn't going to worry. At least, not too much. Even so, his fingers touched the butt of his pistol, as if for reassurance.

They came to a stream, muddy banks on both sides Here Levine paused. He saw clear three-toed footprints in the mud, some of them quite large. The palm of his own hand, fingers spread wide, fitted easily inside one of the prints, with room to spare.

    When he looked up, Diego was crossing himself again. He held the rifle in his other hand.

    They waited at the stream, listening to the gentle gurgle of the water. Something shiny glinted in the stream, catching his eye. He bent over, and plucked it out. It was a piece of glass tubing, roughly the size of a pencil. One end was broken off. There were graduated markings along the side. He realized it was a pipette, of the kind used in laboratories everywhere in the world. Levine held it up to the light, turning it in his fingers. It was odd, he thought. A pipette like this implied -

    Levine turned, and caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye. Something small and brown, scurrying across the mud of the riverbank. Something about the size of a rat.

    Diego grunted in Surprise, Then it was gone, disappearing in foliage.

    Levine moved forward and crouched in the maid by the stream. He peered at the footprints left by the tiny animal. The footprints were three-toed, like the tracks of a bird. He saw more three-toed tracks, including some bigger ones, which were several inches across.

    Levine had seen such prints before, in trackways such as the Purgatoire River in Colorado, where the ancient shoreline was now fossilized, the dinosaur tracks frozen in stone. But these prints were in fresh mud. And they had been made by living animals.

    Sitting on his haunches, Levine heard a soft squeak coming from somewhere to his right. Looking over, he saw the ferns moving slightly.

    He stayed very still, waiting.

    After a moment, a small animal peeked out from among the fronds. It appeared to be the size of a mouse; it had smooth, hairless skin and large eyes mounted high on its tiny head. It was greenish-brown in color, and it made a continuous, irritable squeaking sound at Levine, as if to drive him away. Levine stayed motionless, hardly daring to breathe.

    He recognized this creature, of course. It was a mussaurtis, a tiny prosauropod from the Late Triassic. Skeletal remains were found only in South America. It was one of the smallest dinosaurs known.

    A dinosaur, he thought.

    Even though he had expected I to see them on this island, it was still startling to be confronted by a living, breathing member of the Dinosauria. Especially one so small. He could not take his eyes off it. He was entranced. After all these years, after all the dusty skeletons - an actual living dinosaur!

    The little mussaur ventured farther out from the protection of the fronds. Now Levine could see that it was longer than he had thought at first. It was actually about ten centimeters long, with a surprisingly thick tail. All told, it looked very much like a lizard. It sat upright, squatting on its hind legs on the frond. He saw the rib cage moving as the animal breathed. It waved its tiny forearms in the air at Levine, and squeaked repeatedly.

   Slowly, very slowly, Levine extended his hand.

   The creature squeaked again, but did not run. If anything it seemed curious, cocking its head the way very small animals do, as Levine's hand came closer.

    Finally Levine's fingers touched the tip of the frond. The mussaur stood on its hind legs, balancing with its outstretched tail. Showing no sign of fear, it stepped lightly onto Levine's hand, and stood in the creases of his palm. He hardly felt the weight, it was so light. The mussaur walked around, sniffed Levine's fingers. Levine smiled, charmed.

    Then, suddenly, the little creature hissed in annoyance, and jumped off his hand, disappearing into the palms. Levine blinked, unable to understand why.

    Then he smelled a foul odor, and heard a heavy rustling in the bushes on the other side. There was a soft grunting sound. More rustling.

    For a brief moment, Levine remembered that carnivores in the wild hunted near streambeds, attacking animals when they were vulnerable, bending over to drink. But the recognition came too late; he heard a terrifying high-pitched cry, and when he turned he saw that Diego was    screaming as his body was hauled away, into the bushes. Diego struggled; the bushes shook fiercely; Levine caught a glimpse of a single large foot, its middle toe bearing a short curving claw. Then the foot pulled back. The bushes continued to shake.

    Suddenly, the forest erupted in frightening animal roars all around him. He glimpsed a large animal charging him. Richard Levine turned and fled, feeling the adrenaline surge of pure panic, not knowing where to go, knowing only that it was hopeless. He felt a heavy weight suddenly tear at his backpack, forcing him to his knees in the mud, and he realized in that moment that despite all his planning, despite all his clever deductions, things had gone terribly wrong, and he was about to die.

School

"When we consider mass extinction from a meteor impact," Richard Levine said, "we must ask several questions. First, are there any impact craters on our planet larger than nineteen miles in diameter-which is the smallest size necessary to cause a worldwide extinction event? And second, do any craters match in time a known extinction? It turns out there are a dozen craters this large around the world, of which five coincide with known extinctions. .

    Kelly Curtis yawned in the darkness of her seventh-grade classroom. Sitting at her desk, she propped her chin on her elbows, and tried to stay awake. She already knew this stuff. The TV set in front of the class showed a vast cornfield, seen in an aerial view, the curving outlines faintly visible. She recognized it as the crater in Manson. In the darkness, Dr. Levine's recorded voice said, "This is the crater in Manson, Iowa, dating from sixty-five million years ago, just when dinosaurs became extinct. But was this the meteor that killed the dinosaurs?"

    No, Kelly thought, yawning. Probably the Yucatán peninsula. Manson was too small.

    We now think this crater is too small," Dr. Levine said aloud. "We believe it was too small by an order of magnitude, and the current candidate is the crater near Mérida, in the Yucatán. It seems difficult to imagine, but the impact emptied the entire Gulf of Mexico, causing two-thousand-foot-high tidal waves to wash over the land. It must have been incredible. But there are disputes about this crater, too, particularly concerning the meaning of the cenote ring structure, and the differential death rates of phytoplankton in ocean deposits. That may sound complicated, but don't worry about it for now. We'll go into it in more detail next time. So, that's it for today."

    The lights came up. Their teacher, Mrs. Menzies, stepped to the front of the class and turned off the computer which had been running the display, and the lecture.

    "Well," she said, "I'm glad Dr. Levine gave us this recording. He told me he might not be back in time for today's lecture, but he'll be with us again for sure when we return from spring break next week. Kelly, you and Arby are working for Dr. Levine, is that what he told you?"

    Kelly glanced over at Arby, who was slouched low in his seat, frowning.

    "Yes, Mrs. Menzies," Kelly said.

    "Good. All right, everyone, the assignment for the holidays is all of chapter seven" - there were groans from the class - "including all of the exercises at the end of part one, as well as part two. Be sure to bring that with you, completed, when we return. Have a good spring break. We'll see you back here in a week."

    The bell rang; the class got up, chairs scraping, the room suddenly noisy. Arby drifted over to Kelly. He looked up at her mournfully. Arby was a head shorter than Kelly; he was the shortest person in the class. He was also the youngest. Kelly was thirteen, like the other seventh-graders, but Arby was only eleven. He had already been skipped two grades, because he was so smart. And there were rumors he would be skipped again. Arby was a genius, particularly with computers.

    Arby put his pen in the pocket of his white button-down shirt, and pushed his horn-rim glasses up on his nose. R. B. Benton was black; both his parents were doctors in San José, and they always made sure he was dressed very neatly, like a college kid or something. Which, Kelly reflected, he would probably be in a couple of years, the way he was going.

    Standing next to Arby, Kelly always felt awkward and gawky. Kelly had to wear her sister's old clothes, which her mother had bought from Kmart about a million years ago. She even had to wear Emily's old Reeboks, which were so scuffed and dirty that they never came clean, even after Kelly ran them through the washing machine. Kelly washed and ironed all her own clothes; her mother never had time. Her mother was never even home, most of the time. Kelly looked enviously at Arby's neatly pressed khakis, his polished penny loafers, and sighed.

    Still, even though she was jealous, Arby was her only real friend - the only person who thought it was okay that she was smart. Kelly worried that he'd be skipped to ninth grade, and she wouldn't see him any more.

    Beside her, Arby still frowned. He looked up at her and said, "Why isn't Dr. Levine here?"

    "I don't know," she said. "Maybe something happened."

    "Like what?"

    "I don't know. Something."

    "But he promised he would be here," Arby said. "To take us on the field trip. It was all arranged. We got permission and everything."

    "So? We can still go."

    "But he should be here," Arby insisted stubbornly. Kelly had seen this behavior before. Arby was accustomed to adults being reliable. His parents were both very reliable. Kelly wasn't troubled by such ideas' "Never mind, Arb," she said. "Let's just go see Dr. Thorne ourselves."

    "You think so?"

    "Sure. Why not?"

    Arby hesitated. "Maybe I should call my mom first,"

    "Why?" Kelly said. "You know she'll tell you that you have to go home. Come on, Arb. Let's just go."

    He hesitated, still troubled. Arby might be smart, but any change in plan always bothered him. Kelly knew from experience he would grumble and argue if she pushed for them to go alone, She had to wait, while he made up his own mind.

    "Okay," he said finally. "Let's go see Thorne.

    Kelly grinned. "Meet you in front," she said, "in five minutes."

As she went down the stairs from the second floor, the singsong chant began again. "Kelly is a brainer, Kelly is a brainer...."

    She held her head high. It was that stupid Allison Stone and her stupid friends. Standing at the bottom of the stairs, taunting her.

    "Kelly is a brainer...."

    She swept past the girls, ignoring them. Nearby, she saw Miss Enders, the hall mointor, paying no attention as usual. Even though Mr. Canosa, the assistant principal, had recently made a special homeroom announcement about teasing kids.

    Behind her, the girls called: "Kelly is a brainer....She's the queen...of the Screen...and it's gonna turn her green......" They collapsed in laughter.

    Up ahead, she saw Arby waiting by the door, a bundle of gray cables in his hand. She hurried forward.

    When she got to him, he said, "Forget it."

    "They're stupid jerkoffs."

    "Right."

    "I don't care, anyway.

    "I know. Just forget it."

    Behind them, the girls were giggling. "Kel-ly and Ar-by...going to a party...take a bath, in their math...."

    They went outside into the sunlight, the sounds of the girls thankfully drowned in the noise of everyone going home. Yellow school buses were in the parking lot. Kids were streaming down the steps to their parents' cars, which were lined up all around the block. There was a lot of activity.

    Arby ducked a Frisbee that whooshed over his head, and glanced toward the street. "There he is again."

    "Well, don't look at him," Kelly said.

    "I'm not, I'm not."

    "Remember what Dr. Levine said." "Jeez, Kel. I remember, okay?"

    Across the street was parked the plain gray Taurus sedan that they had seen, off and on, for the past two months. Behind the wheel, pretending to read a newspaper, was that same man with the scraggly growth of beard. This bearded man had been following Dr. Levine ever since he started to teach the class at Woodside. Kelly believed that man was the reason why Dr. Levine asked her and Arby to be his assistants in the first place.

Levine had told them their job would be to help him by carrying equipment, Xeroxing class assignments, collecting homework, and routine things like that. They thought it would be a big honor to work for Dr. Levine -or anyway, interesting to work for an actual professional scientist -so they had agreed to do it.

    But it turned out there never was anything to be done for the class; Dr. Levine did all that himself Instead, he sent them on lots of little errands. And he had told them to be careful to avoid this bearded man ill the car. That wasn't hard; the man never paid any attention to them, because they were kids,

    Dr. Levine had explained the bearded man was following him because of something to do with his arrest, but Kelly didn't believe that. Her own mother had been arrested twice for drunk driving, and there was never anybody following her. So Kelly didn't know why this man was following Levine, but clearly Levine was doing some secret research and he didn't want anybody to find out about it. She knew one thing - Dr. Levine didn't care much about this class he was reaching. He usually gave the lecture off the top of his head. Other times he would walk in the front door of the school, hand them a taped lecture, and walk out the back. They never knew where he went, on those days.

    The errands he sent them on were mysterious, too. Once they went to Stanford and picked up five small squares of plastic from a professor there. The plastic was light, and sort of foamy. Another time they went downtown to an electronics store and picked up a triangular device that the man behind the counter gave them very nervously, as if it might be illegal or something. Another time they picked up a metal tube that looked like it contained cigars. They couldn't help opening it, but they were uneasy to find four sealed plastic ampoules of straw-colored liquid. The ampoules were marked EXTREME DANGER! LETHAL TOXICITY! and had the three-bladed international symbol for biohazard.

    But mostly, their assignments were mundane. He often sent them to libraries at Stanford to Xerox papers on all sorts of subjects: Japanese sword-making, X-ray crystallography, Mexican vampire bats, Central American volcanoes, oceanic currents of El Niño, the mating behavior of mountain sheep, sea-cucumber toxicity, flying buttresses of Gothic cathedrals...

    Dr. Levine never explained why he was interested in these subjects. Often he would send them back day after day, to search for more material. And then, suddenly, he would drop the subject, and never refer to it again. And they would be on to something else.

    Of course, they could figure some of it out. A lot of the questions had to do with the vehicles that Dr. Thorne was building for Dr. Levine's expedition. But most of the time, the subjects were completely mysterious.

    Occasionally, Kelly wondered what the bearded man would make of all this. She wondered whether he knew something they did not. But actually, the bearded man seemed kind of lazy. He never seemed to figure out that Kelly and Arby were doing errands for Dr. Levine.

    Right now, the bearded man glanced over at the entrance to the school, ignoring them. They walked to the end of the street, and sat on the bench to wait for the bus.

Tag

The baby snow leopard spit the bottle out, and rolled over onto its back, paws in the air. It made a soft mewing sound.

    "She wants to be petted," Elizabeth Gelman said.

    Malcolm reached out his hand, to stroke the belly. The cub spun around, and sunk its tiny teeth into his fingers. Malcolm yelled.

    "She does that, sometimes," Gelman said. "Dorje! Bad girl! Is that any way to treat our distinguished visitor?" She reached out, took Malcolm's hand. "It didn't break the skin, but we should clean it anyway." They were in the white research laboratory of the San Francisco Zoo, at three o'clock in the afternoon. Elizabeth Gelman, the youthful head of research, was supposed to report on her findings, but they had to delay for the afternoon feeding in the nursery. Malcolm had watched them feed a baby gorilla, which spit up like a human baby, and a koala, and then the very cute snow-leopard cub.

    "Sorry about that," Gelman said. She took him to a side basin, and soaped his hand. "But I thought it was better that you come here now, when the regular staff is all at the weekly conference."

    "Why is that?"

    "Because there's a lot of interest in the material you gave us, Ian. A lot." She dried his hand with a towel, inspected it again. "I think you'll survive."

    "What have you found?" Malcolm said to her.

    "You have to admit, it is very provocative. By the way, is it from Costa Rica?"

    Keeping his voice neutral, Malcolm said, "Why do you say that?"

    "Because there are all these rumors about unknown animals showing up in Costa Rica. And this is definitely an unknown animal, Ian."

    She led him out of the nursery, and into a small conference room He dropped into a chair, resting his cane on the table. She lowered the lights, and clicked on a slide protector. "Okay. Here's a close-up of your original material, before we be an our examination. As you see, it consists of a fragment of animal tissue in a state of very advanced necrosis. The tissue measures four centimeters by six centimeters. Attached to it is a green plastic tag, measuring two centimeters square. Tissue cut by a knife, but not a very sharp one."

    Malcolm nodded.

    "What'd you use, Ian, your pocketknife?" "Something like that."

    "All right. Let's deal with the tissue sample first." The slide changed; Malcolm saw a microscopic view. "This is a gross histologic section through the superficial epidermis. Those patchy, ragged gaps are where the postmortem necrotic change has eroded the skin surface. But what is interesting is the arrangement of epidermal cells. You'll notice the density of chromatophores, or pigment-bearing cells. In the cut section you see the difference between melanophores here, and allophores, here. The overall pattern is suggestive of a lacerta or amblythynchtis."

    "You mean a lizard?" Malcolm said.

    "Yes," she said. "It looks like a lizard-though the Picture is not entirely consistent." She tapped the left side of the screen. "You see this one cell here, which has this slight rim, in section? We believe that's muscle. The chromatophore could open and close. Meaning that this animal could change color, like a chameleon. And over here you see this large oval shape, with a pale center? That's the pore of a femoral scent gland. There is a waxy substance in the center which we are still analyzing. But our presumption is that this animal was male, since only male lizards have femoral glands."

    "I see," Malcolm said.

    She changed the slide, Malcolm saw what looked like a close-up of a sponge. "Going deeper. Here we see the Structure of the subcutaneous layers. Highly distorted, because of gas bubbles from the clostridia infection that bloated the animal. But you can get a sense of the vessels - see one here - and another here - which are surrounded by smooth muscle fibers. This is not characteristic of lizards, In fact, the whole appearance of this slide is wrong for lizards, or reptiles of any sort."

    "You mean it looks warm-blooded."

    "Right," Gelman said. "Not really mammalian, but perhaps avian. This could be, oh, I don't know, a dead pelican. Something like that."

    "Uh-huh."

    "Except no pelican has a skin like that."

    "I see," Malcolm said.

    "And there s no feathers."

    "Uh-huh."

    "Now," Gelman said, "we were able to extract a minute quantity of blood from the intra-arterial spaces. Not much, but enough to conduct a microscopic examination. Here it is."

    The slide changed again. He saw a jumble of cells, mostly red cells, and an occasional misshapen white cell. It was confusing to look at.

    "This isn't my area, Elizabeth," he said.

    "Well, I'll just give you the highlights," she said. "First of all, nucleated red cells. That's characteristic of birds, not mammals. Second, rather atypical hemoglobin, differing in several base pairs from other lizards. Third, aberrant white-cell structure. We don't have enough material to make a determination, but we suspect this animal has a highly unusual immune system.

    "Whatever that means," Malcolm said, with a shrug.

    "We don't know, and the sample doesn't give us enough to find out. By the way, can you get more?"

    "I might be able to," he said.

    "Where, from Site B?"

    Malcolm looked puzzled. "Site B?"

    "Well, that's what's embossed on the tag." She changed the slide. "I must say, Ian, this tag is very interesting. Here at the zoo, we tag animals all the time, and we're familiar with all the ordinary commercial brands sold around the world. Nobody's seen this tag before. Here it is, magnified ten times. The actual object is roughly the size of your thumbnail. Uniform plastic outer surface, attaches to the animal by a Teflon coated, stainless-steel clip on the other side. It's a rather small clip, of the kind used to tag infants. The animal you saw was adult?"

    "Presumably."

    "So the tag was probably in place for a while, ever since the animal was young," Gelman said. "Which makes sense, considering the degree of weathering. You'll notice the pitting on the surface. That's very Unusual. This plastic is Duralon, the stuff they use to make football helmets. It's extremely tough, and this pitting can't have occurred through simple wear."

    "Then what?"

    "It's almost certainly a chemical reaction, such as exposure to acid, perhaps in aerosol form."

    "Like volcanic fumes?" Malcolm said.

    "That could do it, particularly in view of what else we've learned. You'll notice that the tag is rather thick - actually, it's nine millimeters across. And it's hollow."

    "Hollow?" Malcolm said, frowning.

    "Yes. It contains an inner cavity. We didn't want to open it, so we X- rayed it. Here." The slide changed. Malcolm saw a jumble of white lines and boxes, inside the tag.

    "There appears to be substantial corrosion, again perhaps from acid fumes. But there's no question what this once was. It's a radio tag, Ian. Which means that this unusual animal, this warm-blooded lizard or whatever it was, was tagged and raised by somebody from birth. And that's the part that's got people around here upset. Somebody's raising these things. Do you know how that happened?"

    "I haven't the faintest idea," Malcolm said.

    Elizabeth Gelman sighed. "You're a lying son of a bitch."

    He held out his hand. "May I have my sample back?"

    She said, "Ian. After all I've done for you."

    "The sample?"

    "I think you owe me an explanation."

    "And I promise, you'll have one. In about two weeks. I'll buy dinner."

    She tossed a silver-foil package on the table. He picked it up, and slipped it in his pocket. "Thanks, Liz." He got up to go, "I hate to run, but I've got to make a call right away."

    He started for the door, and she said, "By the way, how did it die, Ian? This animal."

    He paused. "Why do you ask?"

    "Because, when we teased up the skin cells, we found a few foreign cells under the outer epidermal layer. Cells belonging to another animal."

    "Meaning what?"

    "Well, it's the typical picture you see when two lizards fight. They rub against each other. Cells get pushed under the superficial layer."

    "Yes," he said. "There were signs of a fight on the carcass. The annimal had been wounded."

    "And you should also know there were signs of chronic vasoconstriction in the arterial vessels. This animal was under stress, Ian. And not just from the fight that wounded it. That would have disappeared in early postmortem changes. I'm talking about chronic, continuous stress. Wherever this creature lived, its environment was extremely stressful and dangerous."

    "I see."

    "So. How come a tagged animal has such a stressful life?"

At the entrance to the zoo, he looked around to see if he was being followed, then stopped at a pay phone and dialed Levine. The machine picked up; Levine wasn't there. Typical, Malcolm thought. Whenever you needed him he wasn't there. Probably off trying to get his Ferrari out of impound again.

    Malcolm hung up, and headed toward his car.

Thorne

"Thorne Mobile Field Systems" was stenciled in black lettering on a large rolling metal garage door, at the far end of the Industrial Park. There was a regular door to the left. Arby pushed the buzzer on a small box with a grille. A gruff voice said, "Go away."

    "It's us, Dr. Thorne. Arby and Kelly."

    "Oh. Okay."

    There was a click as the door unlocked, and they walked inside. They found themselves in a large open shed. Workmen were making modifications on several vehicles; the air smelled of acetylene, engine oil, and fresh paint. Directly ahead Kelly saw a dark-green Ford Explorer with its roof cut open; two assistants stood on ladders, fitting a large flat panel of black solar cells over the top of the car. The hood of the Explorer was up, and the V-6 engine had been pulled out; workmen were now lowering a small, new engine in its place -it looked like a rounded shoebox, with the dull shine of aluminum alloy. Others were bringing the wide, flat rectangle of the Hughes converter that would be mounted on top of the motor.

    Over to the right, she saw the two RV trailers that Thorne's team had been working on for the last few weeks. They weren't the usual trailers you saw people driving for the weekends. One was enormous and sleek, almost as big as a bus, and outfitted with living and sleeping quarters for four people, as well as all sorts of special scientific equipment. It was called "Challenger" and it had an unusual feature: once you parked it, the walls could slide outward, expanding the inside dimensions.

    The Challenger trailer was made to connect up through a special accordion passageway to the second trailer, which was somewhat smaller, and was pulled by the first. This second RV contained laboratory equipment and some very high-tech refinements, though Kelly wasn't sure exactly what. Right now, the second trailer was nearly hidden by the huge stream of sparks that spit out from a welder on the roof. Despite all the activity, the trailer looked mostly finished-although she could see people working inside, and all the upholstery, the chairs and seats, were lying around on the ground outside. Thorne himself was standing in the middle of the room, shouting at the welder on the roof of the camper. "Come on, Come on, we've got to be finished today! Eddie, let's go." He turned, shouted again, "No, no, no. Look at the plans! Henry: you can't place that strut laterally. It has to be crosswise, for strength. Look at the plans!"

    Doc Thorne was a gray-haired, barrel-chested man of fifty-five. Except for his wire-frame glasses, he looked as if he might be a retired prizefighter. It was hard for Kelly to imagine Thorne as a University professor; he was immensely strong, and in continuous movement. "Damn it, Henry! Henry! Henry, are you listening to me?"

    Thorne swore again, and shook his fist in the air. He turned to the kids. "These guys," he said. "They're supposed to be helping me." From the Explorer, there was a white-hot crack like lightning. The two men leaning into the hood jumped away, as a cloud of acrid smoke rose above the car. "What'd I tell you?" Thorne shouted. "Ground it! Ground it before you do anything! We've got serious voltages here, guys! You're going to get fried if you're not careful!"

    He looked back at the kids and shook his head. "They just don't get it," he said. "That IUD is serious defense."

    "IUD?"

    "Internal Ursine Deterrent-that's what Levine calls it. It's his idea of a joke," Thorne said. "Actually, I developed this system a few years back for park rangers in Yellowstone, where bears break into trailers. Flip a switch, and you run ten thousand volts across the outer skin of the trailer. Wham-o! Takes the fight out of the biggest bear. But that kind of voltage'll blow these guys right off the trailer. And then what? I get a workmen's-compensation suit. For their stupidity." He shook his head. "So? Where's Levine?"

    "We don't know," Arby said.

    "What do you mean? Didn't he teach your class today?"

    "No, he didn't come."

    Thorne swore again. "Well, I need him today, to go over the final revisions, before we do our field testing. He was supposed to be back today."

    "Back from where?" Kelly said.

    "Oh, he went on one of his field trips," Thorne said. "Very excited about it, before he went. I outfitted him myself - loaned him my latest field pack. Everything he could ever want in just forty-seven pounds. He liked it. Left last Monday, four days ago."

    "For where?"

    "How should I know?" Thorne said. "He wouldn't tell me. And I gave up asking. You know they're all the same, now. Every scientist I deal with is secretive. But you can't blame them. They're all afraid of being ripped off, or sued. The modern world. Last year I built equipment for an expedition to the Amazon, we waterproofed it - which you'd want in the Amazon rain forest - soaking-wet electronics just don't work - and the principal scientist was charged with misappropriating funds. For waterproofing! Some university bureaucrat said it was an unnecessary expense. I'm telling you, it's insane. Just insane. Henry - did you hear anything I said to you? Put it crosswise!"

    Thorne strode across the room, waving his arms. The kids followed behind him.

    "But now, look at this," Thorne said. "For months we've been mod]fying his field vehicles, and finally we're ready. He wants them light, I build them light. He wants them strong, I build them strong-light and strong both, why not, it's just impossible, what he's asking for, but with enough titanium and honeycarbon composite, we're doing it anyway. He wants it off petroleum base, and off the grid, and we do that, too. So finally he's got what he wanted, an immensely strong portable laboratory to go where there's no gasoline and no electricity. And now that it's finished ... I can't believe it. He really didn't show up for your class?"

    "No," Kelly said.

    "So he's disappeared," Thorne said. "Wonderful. Perfect. What about our field test? We were going to take these vehicles out for a week, and put them through their paces."

    "I know," Kelly said. "We got Permission from our parents and everything, so we could go, too."

    "And now he's not here," Thorne fumed. "I suppose I should have expected it. These rich kids, they do whatever they want. A guy like Levine gives spoiled a bad name."

    From the ceiling, a large metal cage came crashing down, landing next to them on the floor. Thorne jumped aside. "Eddie! Damn! Will you watch it?"

    "Sorry, Doc," said Eddie Carr, high up in the rafters. "But specs are it can't deform at twelve thousand psi. We had to test it."

    "That's fine, Eddie. But don't test it when we're Linder it!" Thorne bent to examine the cage, which was circular, constructed of inch-thick titanium-alloy bars. It had survived the fall without harm. And it was light; Thorne lifted it upright with one hand. It was about six feet high and four feet in diameter. It looked like an oversized bird cage. It had a swinging door, fitted with a heavy lock.

    What's that for?" Arby asked.

    Actually," Thorne said, "it's part of that" He pointed I across the room, where a workman was putting together a stack of telescoping aluminum struts. "High observation platform, made to be assembled in the field. Scaffolding sets up into a rigid structure, about fifteen feet high. Fitted with a little shelter on top. Also collapsible."

    "A platform to observe what?" Arby said. Thorne said, "He didn't tell you?"

    "No," Kelly said.

    "No," Arby said.

    "Well, he didn't tell me, either," Thorne said, shaking his head. "All I know is he wants everything immensely strong. Light and strong, light and strong. Impossible." He sighed. "God save me from academics."

    "I thought you were an academic," Kelly said.

    "Former academic," Thorne said briskly. "Now I actually make things. I don't just talk."

Colleagues who knew Jack Thorne agreed that retirement marked the happiest period in his life. As a professor of applied engineering, and a specialist in exotic materials, he had always demonstrated a practical focus and a love of students. His most famous course at Stanford, Structural Engineering 101a, was known among the students as "Thorny Problems," because Thorne continually provoked his class to solve applied-engineering challenges he set for them. Some of these had long since entered into student folklore. There was, for example, the Toilet Paper Disaster: Thorne asked the students to drop a carton of eggs from Hoover Tower without injury. As padding, they could only use the cardboard tubes at the center of toilet paper rolls. There were spattered eggs all over the plaza below.

    Then, another year, Thorne asked the students to build a chair to support a two-bundred-pound man, using only, paper Q-tips and thread. And another time, he hung the answer sheet for the final exam from the classroom ceiling, and invited his students to pull it down, using whatever they could make with a cardboard shoebox containing a pound of licorice, and some toothpicks.

    When he was not in class, Thorne often served as an expert witness in legal cases involving materials engineering. He specialized in explosions, crashed airplanes, collapsed buildings, and other disasters. These forays into the real world sharpened his view that scientists needed the widest possible education. He used to say, "How can you design for people if you don't know history and psychology? You can't. Because your mathematical formulas may be perfect, but the people will screw it up. And if that happens, it means you screwed it up." He peppered his lectures with quotations from Plato, Chaka Zulu, Emerson, and Chang-tzu.

    But as a professor who was popular with his students-and who advocated general education-Thorne found himself swimming against the tide. The academic world was marching toward ever more specialized knowledge, expressed in ever more dense jargon. In this climate, being liked by your students was a sign of shallowness; and interest in real-world problems was proof of intellectual poverty and a distressing indifference to theory. But in the end, it was his fondness for Chang-tzu that pushed him out the door. In a departmental meeting, one of his colleagues got up and announced that "Some mythical Chinese bullshitter means fuck-all for engineering."

    Thorne took early retirement a month later, and soon after started his own company. He enjoyed his work thoroughly, but he missed contact with the students, which was why he liked Levine's two youthful assistants. These kids were smart, they were enthusiastic, and they were young enough so that the schools hadn't destroyed all their interest in learning. They could still actually use their brains, which in Thorne's view was a sure sign they hadn't yet completed a formal education.

"Jerry!" Thorne bellowed, to one of the welders on the RVS. "Balance the struts on both sides! Remember the crash tests!" Thorne pointed to a video monitor set on the floor, which showed a computer image of the RV crashing into a barrier. First it crashed end-on, then it crashed sideways, then it rolled and crashed again. Each time, the vehicle survived with very little damage. The computer program had been developed by the auto companies, and then discarded. Thorne acquired it, and modified it. "Of course the auto companies discarded it - it's a good idea. Don't want any good ideas coming out of a big company. Might lead to a good product!" He sighed. "Using this computer, we've crashed these vehicles ten thousand times: designing, crashing, modeling, crashing again. No theories, just actual testing. The way it ought to be."

    Thorne's dislike of theory was legendary. In his view' a theory was nothing more than a substitute for experience put forth by someone who didn't know what he was talking about. "And now look. Jerry? Jerry! Why'd we do all these simulations, if you guys aren't going to follow the plans? Is everybody brain-dead around here?"

    "Sorry, Doc..."

    "Don't be sorry! Be right!"

    "Well, we're massively overbuilt anyway-"

    "Oh? Is that your decision? You're the designer now? Just follow the plans!"

    Arby trotted alongside Thorne. "I'm worried about Dr. Levine," he said.

    'Really? I'm not."

    "But he's always been reliable. And very well organized."

    "That's true," Thorne said. "He's also completely impulsive and does whatever he feels like."

    "Maybe so," Arby said, "but I don't think he'd be missing without a good reason. I'm afraid he might be in trouble. Only last week, he had us go with him to visit Professor Malcolm in Berkeley, who had this map of the world in his office, and it showed - "

    "Malcolm!" Thorne snorted. "Spare me! Peas in a pod, those two. Each more impractical than the other. But I'd better get hold of Levine now." He turned on his heel, and walked toward his office.

    Arby said, "You going to use the satphone?"

    Thorne paused. "The what?"

    "The satphone," Arby said. "Didn't Dr. Levine take a satphone with him?"

    "How could he?" Thorne said. "You know the smallest satellite phones are the size of a suitcase."

    "Yeah, but they don't have to be," Arby said. "You could have made one very small."

    "Could I? How?" Despite himself, Thorne was amused by this kid. You had to like him.

    "With that VLSI com board that we picked up," Arby said. "The triangular one. It had two Motorola BSN-23 chip arrays, and they're restricted technology developed for the CIA because they allow you to make a - "

    Thorne said, interrupting him. "Where did you learn all this? I've warned you about hacking systems - "

    "Don't worry, I'm careful," Arby said. "But it's true about the com board, isn't it? You could use it to make a one-pound satphone. So: did you?"

    Thorne stared at him for a long time.

    "Maybe," he said finally. "What of it?"

    Arby grinned. "Cool," he said.

Thorne's small office was located in a corner of the shed. Inside the walls were plastered with blueprints, order forms on clipboards, and three-dimensional cutaway computer drawings, Electronic components, equipment catalogs, and stacks of faxes were scattered across his desk. Thorne rummaged through them, and finally came up with a small gray handheld telephone. "Here we are." He held it up for Arby to see. "Pretty good, huh? Designed it myself."

    Kelly said, "It looks just like a cellular phone."

    "Yes, but it's not. A cellular phone uses a grid in place. A satellite phone links directly to communication satellites in space. With one of these I can talk anywhere in the world." He dialed swiftly. "Used to be, they needed a three-foot dish. Then it was a one-foot dish. Now no dish at all - just the handset. Not bad, if I say so myself. Let's see if he's answering." He pushed the speakerphone. They heard the call dial through, hissing static.

    "Knowing Richard," Thorne said, "he probably just missed his plane, or forgot that he was supposed to be back here today for final approvals. And we're pretty much finished here. When you see we're down to the exterior struts and the upholstery, the fact is, we're done. He's going to hold us up. It's very inconsiderate of him." The phone rang, repeated electronic beeps. "If I can't get through to him, I'll try Sarah Harding."

    "Sarah Harding?" Kelly asked, looking up.

    Arby said, "Who's Sarah Harding?"

    "Only the most famous young animal behaviorist in the world, Arb." Sarah Harding was one of Kelly's personal heroes. Kelly had read every article she could about her. Sarah Harding had been a poor scholarship student at the University of Chicago but now, at thirty-three, she was an assistant professor at Princeton. She was beautiful and independent, a rebel, who went her own way. She had chosen the life of a scientist in the field, living alone in Africa, where she studied lions and hyenas. She was famously tough. Once, when her Land Rover broke down, she walked twenty miles across the savannah all by herself, driving away lions by throwing rocks at them.

    In photographs, Sarah was usually posed in shorts and a khaki shirt, with binoculars around her neck, next to a Land Rover. With her short, dark hair and her strong, muscular body, she looked rugged but glamorous at the same time. At least, that was how she appeared to Kelly, who always studied the pictures intently, taking in every detail.

    "Never heard of her," Arby said.

    Thorne said, "Spending too much time with computers, Arby?"

    Arby said, "No." Kelly saw Arby's shoulders hunch, and he sort of withdrew into himself, the way he always did when he felt criticized. Sulky, he said, "Animal behaviorist?"

    "That's right," Thorne said. "I know Levine's talked to her several times in the last few weeks. She's helping him with all this equipment, when it finally goes into the field. Or advising him. Or something. Or maybe the connection is with Malcolm. After all, she was in love with Malcolm."

    "I don't believe it", Kelly said. "Maybe he was in love with her...."

    Thorne looked at her. "You've met her?"

    "No. But I know about her."

    "I see." Thorne said no more. He could see all the signs of hero worship, and he approved. A girl could do worse than admire Sarah Harding. At least she wasn't an athlete or a rock star. In fact, it was refreshing for a kid to admire somebody who actually tried to advance knowledge.

    The phone continued to ring. There was no answer.

    "Well, we know Levine's equipment is in order," Thorne said. "Because the call is going through. We know that much."

    Arby said, "Can you trace it?"

    "Unfortunately, no. And if we keep this up, we'll probably drain the field battery, which means- "

    There was a click, and they heard a man's voice, remarkably distinct and clear: "Levine."

    "Okay. Good. He's there," Thorne said, nodding. He pushed the button on his handset. "Richard? It's Doc Thorne."

    Over the speakerphone, they heard a sustained static hiss. Then a cough, and a scratchy voice said: "Hello? Hello? It's Levine here."

    Thorne pressed the button on his phone. "Richard. It's Thorne. Do you read me?"

    "Hello?" Levine said, at the other end. "Hello?"

    Thorne sighed. "Richard. You have to press the 'T' button, for transmit. Over."

    "Hello?" Another cough, deep and rasping. "This is Levine. Hello?"

    Thorne shook his head in disgust. "Obviously, be doesn't know how to work it. Damn! I went over it very carefully with him. Of course he wasn't paying attention. Geniuses never pay attention. They think they know everything. These things aren't toys." He pushed the send button. "Richard, listen to me. You must push the 'T' in order to - "

    "This is Levine. Hello? Levine. Please. I need help." A kind of groan. "If you can hear me, send help. Listen, I'm on the island, I managed to get here all right, but - "

    A crackle. A hiss.

    "Uh-oh," Thorne said.

    "What is it?" Arby said, leaning forward.

    "We're losing him."

    "Why?"

    "Battery," Thorne said. "It's going fast. Damn. Richard: where are you?"

    Over the speakerphone, they heard Levine's voice: " - dead already - situation got - now - very serious - don't know - can hear me, but if you - get help - "

    "Richard. Tell us where you are!"

    The phone hissed, the transmission getting steadily worse. They heard Levine say: " - have me surrounded, and - vicious - can smell them especially - night - "

    "What is he talking about?" Arby said.

    " - to - injury - can't - not long - please - "

    And then there was a final, fading hiss.

    And suddenly the phone went dead.

    Thorne clicked off his own handset, and turned off the speakerphone. He turned to the kids, who were both pale. "We have to find him," he said. "Right away."

SECOND CONFIGURATION

"Self-organization elaborates in complexity as the

system advances toward the chaotic edge."

IAN MALCOLM

Clues

Thorne unlocked the door to Levine's apartment, and flicked on the lights. They stared, astonished. Arby said, "It looks like a museum!"

Levine's two-bedroom apartment was decorated in a vaguely Asian style, with rich wooden cabinets, and expensive antiques. But the apartment was spotlessly clean, and most of the antiques were housed in plastic cases. Everything was neatly labeled. They walked slowly into the room.

"Does he live here?" Kelly said. She found it hard to believe. The apartment seemed so impersonal to her, almost inhuman. And her own apartment was such a mess all the time....

    "Yeah, he does," Thorne said, pocketing the key. "It always looks like this. It's why he can never live with a woman. He can't stand to have anybody touch anything."

    The living-room couches were arranged around a glass coffee table. On the table were four piles of books, each neatly aligned with the glass edge. Arby glanced at the titles. Catastrophe Theory and Emergent Structures. Inductive Processes in Molecular Evolution. Cellular Automata. Methodology of Non-Linear Adaptation. Phase Transition in Evolutionary Systems. There were also some older books, with titles in German.

    Kelly sniffed the air. "Something cooking?"

    "I don't know"  Thorne said. He went into the  dining room. Along the wall, he saw a hot plate with a row of covered dishes. They saw a polished wood dining table, with a place set for one, silver and cut glass. Soup steamed from a bowl.

    Thorne walked over and picked up a sheet of paper on the table and read: "Lobster bisque, baby organic greens, seared ahi tuna." A yellow Post-it was attached. "Hope your trip was good! Romelia."

    "Wow, " Kelly said."You mean somebody makes dinner for him every day?"

"I guess," Thorne said. He didn't seem impressed; he shuffled through a stack of unopened mail that had been set out beside the plate. Kelly turned to some faxes on a nearby table. The first one was from the Peabody Museum at Yale, in New Haven. "Is this German?" she said handing it to Thorne.

Dear Dr. Levine:

Your requested document:

"Geschichtliche Forschungsarbeiten über die Geologie Zentralamerikas, 1922-1929"

has been sent by Federal Express today.

Thank you.

(signed)

Dina Skrumbis, Archivist

"I can't read it," Thorne said. "But I think it's 'Something Researches on the Geology of Central America.' And it's from the twenties - not exactly hot news."

    "I wonder why he wanted it?" she said.

    Thorne didn't answer her. He went into the bedroom.

The bedroom had a spare, minimal look, the bed a black futon, neatly made. Thorne opened the closet doors, and saw racks of clothing, everything pressed, neatly spaced, much of it in plastic. He opened the top dresser drawer and saw socks folded, arranged by color.

    "I don't know how he can live like this," Kelly said.

    "Nothing to it," Thorne said. "All you need is servants." He opened the other drawers quickly, one after another.

    Kelly wandered over to the bedside table. There were several books there. The one on top was very small, and yellowing with age. It was in German; the title was Die Fünf Todesarten. She flipped through it, saw colored pictures of what looked like Aztecs in colorful costumes. It was almost like an illustrated children's book she thought.

    Underneath were books and journal articles with the dark-red cover of the Santa Fe Institute: Genetic Algorithms and Heuristic Networks. Geology of Central America, Tessellation Automata of Arbitrary Dimension. The 1989 Annual Report of the InGen Corporation. And next to the telephone, she noticed a sheet of hastily scribbled notes. She recognized the precise handwriting as Levine's.

    It said:

"SITE B"

Vulkanische

Tacaño?

Nublar?

1 of 5 Deaths?

in mtns? No!!!

maybe Guitierrez

careful

    Kelly said, "What's Site B? He has notes about it."

    Thorne came over to look. "Vulkanische," he said. "That means volcanic,' I think. And Tacaño and Nublar...They sound like place names. If they are, we can check that on an atlas...."

    "And what's this about one of five deaths?" Kelly said.

    "Damned if I know," he said.

    They were staring at the paper when Arby walked into the bedroom and said, "What's Site B?"

Thorne looked up. "Why?"

    "You better see his office," Arby said.

Levine had turned the second bedroom into an office. It was, like the rest of the apartment, admirably treat. There was a desk with papers laid out in tidy stacks alongside a computer, covered in plastic. But behind the desk there was a large corkboard that covered most of the wall. And on this board, Levine had tacked up maps, charts, newspaper clippings, Landsat images, and aerial photographs. At the top of the board was a large sign that said "Site B?"

Alongside that was a blurred, curling snapshot of a bespectacled Chinese man in a white lab coat, standing in the jungle beside a wooden sign that said "Site B." His coat was unbuttoned, and he was wearing a tee shirt with lettering on it.

    Alongside the photo was a large blowup of the tee shirt, as seen in the original photograph. It was hard to read the lettering, which was partly covered on both sides by the lab coat, but the shirt seemed to say:

nGen Site B

esearch Facili

    In neat handwriting, Levine had noted: "InGen Site B Research Facility???? WHERE???"

    Just below that was a page cut from the InGen Annual Report. A circled paragraph read:

In addition to its headquarters in Palo Alto, where InGen maintains an ultra-modern 200,000 square foot research laboratory, the company runs three field laboratories around the world. A geological lab in South Africa, where amber and other biological specimens are acquired; a research farm in the mountains of Costa Rica, where exotic varieties of plants are grown; and a facility on the island of Isla Nublar, 120 miles west of Costa Rica.

    Next to that Levine had written: "No B! Liars!"

    Arby said, "He's really obsessed with Site B."

    "I'll say," Thorne said. "And he thinks it's on an island somewhere."

    Peering closely at the board, Thorne looked at the satellite images. He noticed that although they were printed in false colors, at various degrees of magnification, they all seemed to show the same general geographical area: a rocky coastline, and some islands offshore. The coastline had a beach, and encroaching jungle; it might be Costa Rica, but it was impossible to say for sure. In truth, it could be any of a dozen places in the world.

    "He said he was on an island," Kelly said.

    "Yes." Thorne shrugged. "But that doesn't help us much." He stared at the board. "There must be twenty islands here, maybe more."

    Thorne looked at a memo, near the bottom.

SITE B @#$#TO ALL DEPARTMENTS OF[]****

MINDER OF%$#@#!PRESS AVOIDAN*****

Mr. Hammond wishes to remind all****after^*&^marketing

*%**Long-term marketing plan*&^&^%

Marketing of proposed resort facilities requires that full com-

      plexity of JP technology not be revealed announced made

known. Mr, Hammond wishes to remind all departments that

Production facility will not be topic subject of any press release

or discussion at any time.

Production/manufacturing facility cannot be#@#$#

reference to production island loc

Isla S. inhouse reference only

strict press****^'%$**guidelines

    "This is weird," he said. What do you make of this?"

    Arby came over, and looked at it thoughtfully.

    "All these missing letters and garbage," Thorne said. "Does it make any sense to you?"

    "Yes," Arby said. He snapped his fingers, and went directly to Levine's desk. There, he pulled the plastic cover off the computer, and said, "I thought so."

    The computer on Levine's desk was not the modern machine that Thorne would have expected. This computer was several years old, large and bulky, its cover scratched in many places. It had a black stripe on the box that said "Design Associates, Inc." And lower down, right by the power switch, a shiny little metal tag that said "Property International Genetics Technology, Inc., Palo Alto, CA."

    "What's this?" Thorne said. "Levine has an InGen computer?"

    "Yes," Arby said. "He sent us to buy it last week. They were selling off computer equipment."

    "And he sent you?" Thorne said.

    "Yeah. Me and Kelly. He didn't want to go himself. He's afraid of being followed."

    "But this thing's a CAD-CAM machine, and it must be five years old," Thorne said. CAD-CAM computers were used by architects, graphic artists, and mechanical engineers. "Why would Levine want it?"

    "He never told us," Arby said, flipping on the power switch. "But I know now."

    "Yes?"

    "That memo," Arby said, nodding to the wall. "You know why it looks that way? It's a recovered computer file. Levine's been recovering InGen files from this machine."

As Arby explained it, all the computers that InGen sold that day had had their hard drives reformatted to destroy any sensitive data on the disks. But the CAD-CAM machines were an exception. These machines all had special software installed by the manufacturer. The software was keyed to individual machines, using individual code references. That made these computers awkward to reformat, because the software would have to be reinstalled individually, taking hours.

"So they didn't do it," Thorne said. "Right," Arby said. "They just erased the directory, and sold them."

    "And that means the original files are still on the disk."

    "Right."

    The monitor glowed. The screen said:

TOTAL RECOVERED FILES: 2,387

    "Jeez," Arby said. He leaned forward, staring intently, fingers poised over the keys. He pushed the directory button, and row after row of file names scrolled down, Thousands of files in all.

    Thorne said "How are you going to - "

    "Give me a minute here," Arby said, interrupting him. Then he began to type rapidly.

    Okay, Arb," Thorne said. He was amused by the imperious way Arby behaved whenever he was working with a computer. He seemed to forget how young he was, his usual diffidence and timidity vanished. The electronic world was really his element. And he knew he was good at it.

Thorne said, "Any help you can give us will be - "

    "Doc," Arby said. "Come on. Go and, uh, I don't know. Help Kelly or something."

    And he turned away, and typed.

Raptor

The velociraptor was six feet tall and dark green. Poised to attack, it hissed loudly, its muscular neck thrust forward, jaws wide. Tim, one of the modelers, said, "What do you think, Dr. Malcolm?"

    "No menace," Malcolm said, walking by. He was in the back win of the biology department, on his way to his office.

    "No menace?" Tim said.

    "They never stand like this, flatfooted on two feet. Give him a book" - he grabbed a notebook from a desk, and placed it in the forearms of the animal - "and he might be singing a Christmas carol."

    "Gee," Tim said. "I didn't think it was that bad."

    "Bad?" Malcolm said. "This is an insult to a great predator. We should feel his speed and menace and power. Widen the jaws. Get the neck down. Tense the muscles, tighten the skin. And get that leg up. Remember, raptors don't attack with their jaws - they use their toe-claws," Malcolm said. "I want to see the claw raised up, ready to slash down and tear the guts out of its prey."

    "You really think so?" Tim said doubtfully. "It might scare little kids...."

    "You mean it might scare you." Malcolm continued down the hallway. "And another thing: change that hissing sound. It sounds like somebody taking a pee. Give this animal a snarl. Give a great predator his due."

    "Gee," Tim said, "I didn't know you had such personal feelings about it."

    "It should be accurate," Malcolm said. "You know, there is such a thing as accurate and inaccurate. Irrespective of whatever your feelings are." He walked on, irritable, ignoring the momentary pain in his leg. The modeler annoyed him, although he had to admit Tim was just a representative of the current, fuzzy-minded thinking - what Malcolm called "sappy science."

    Malcolm had long been impatient with the arrogance of his scientific colleagues. They maintained that arrogance, he knew, by resolutely ignoring the history of science as a way of thought. Scientists pretended that history didn't matter, because the errors of the past were now corrected by modern discoveries. But of course their forebears had believed exactly the same thing in the past, too. They had been wrong then. And modern scientists were wrong now. No episode of science history proved it better than the way dinosaurs had been portrayed over the decades.

    It was sobering to realize that the most accurate perception of dinosaurs had also been the first. Back in the 1840s, when Richard Owen first described giant bones in England, he named them Dinosauria: terrible lizards. That was still the most accurate description of these creatures, Malcolm thought. They were indeed like lizards, and they were terrible.

    But since Owen, the "scientific" view of dinosaurs had undergone many changes. Because the Victorians believed in the inevitability of progress, they insisted that the dinosaurs must necessarily be inferior - why else would they be extinct? So the Victorians made them fat, lethargic, and dumb-big dopes from the past. This perception was elaborated, so that by the early twentieth century, dinosaurs had become so weak that they could not support their own weight. Apatosaurs had to stand belly-deep in water or they would crush their own legs. The whole conception of the ancient world was suffused with these ideas of weak, stupid, slow animals.

    That view didn't change until the 1960s, when a few renegade scientists, led by John Ostrom, began to imagine quick, agile, hot-blooded dinosaurs. Because these scientists had the temerity to question dogma, they were brutally criticized for years, even though it now seemed their ideas were correct.

    But in the last decade, a growing interest in social behavior had led to still another view. Dinosaurs were now seen as caring creatures, living in groups, raising their little babies. They were good animals, even cute animals. The big sweeties had nothing to do with their terrible fate, which was visited on them by Alvarez's meteor. And that new sappy view produced people like Tim, who were reluctant to look at the other side of the coin, the other face of life. Of course, some dinosaurs had been social and cooperative. But others had been hunters - and killers of unparalleled viciousness. For Malcolm, the truest picture of life in the past incorporated the interplay of all aspects of life, the good and the bad, the strong and the weak. It was no good pretending anything else.

    Scaring little kids, indeed! Malcolm snorted irritably, as he walked down the hall.

In truth, Malcolm was bothered by what Elizabeth Gelman had told him about the tissue fragment, and especially the tag. That tag meant trouble, Malcolm was sure of it.

    But he wasn't sure what to do about it.

    He turned the corner, past the display of Clovis Points, arrowheads made by early man in America. Up ahead, he saw his office. Beverly, his assistant, was standing behind her desk, tidying papers, getting ready to go home. She handed him his faxes and said, "I've left word for Dr. Levine at his office, but he hasn't called back. They don't seem to know where he is."

    "For a change," Malcolm said, sighing. It was so difficult working with Levine; he was so erratic, you never knew what to expect. Malcolm had been the one to post bail when Levine was arrested in his Ferrari. He riffled through the faxes: conference dates, requests for reprints...nothing interesting. "Okay. Thanks, Beverly."

    "Oh. And the photographers came. They finished about an hour ago.

    "What photographers?" he said.

    "From Chaos Quarterly. To photograph your office."

    "What are you talking about?" Malcolm said.

    "They came to photograph your office," she said. "For a series about workplaces of famous mathematicians. They had a letter from you, saying it was - "

    "I never sent any letter," Malcolm said. "And I've never heard of Chaos Quarterly."

    He went into his office and looked around. Beverly hurried in after him, her face worried.

    "Is it okay? Is everything here?"

    "Yes," he said, scanning quickly. "It seems to be fine." He was opening the drawers to his desk, one after another. Nothing appeared to be missing.

    "That's a relief," Beverly said, "because - "

    He turned, and looked at the far side of the room.

    The map.

    Malcolm had a large map of the world, with pins stuck in it for all the sightings of what Levine kept calling "aberrant forms." By the most liberal count - Levine's count - there had now been twelve in all, from Rangiroa in the west, to Baia California and Ecuador in the cast. Few of them were verified. But now there was a tissue sample that confirmed one specimen, and that made all the rest more likely.

    "Did they photograph this map?"

    "Yes, they photographed everything. Does it matter? "

    Malcolm looked at the map, trying to see it with fresh eyes. To see what an outsider would make of it. He and Levine had spent hours in front of this map, considering the possibility of a "lost world," trying to decide where it might be. They had narrowed it down to five islands in a chain, off the coast of Costa Rica. Levine was convinced that it was one of those islands, and Malcolm was beginning to think he was right. But those islands weren't highlighted on the map....

    Beverly said, "They were a very nice group. Very polite. Foreign - Swiss, I think."

    Malcolm nodded, and sighed. The hell with it, be thought. It was bound to get out sooner or later.

    "It's all right, Beverly."

    "Are you sure?"

    "Yes, it's fine. Have a good evening."

    "Good night, Dr. Malcolm."

Alone in his office, he dialed Levine. The phone rang, and then the answering machine beeped. Levine was still not home.

    "Richard, are you there? If you are, pick up, it's important." He waited, nothing happened.

    "Richard, it's Ian. Listen, we have a problem. The map is no longer secure. And I've had that sample analyzed, Richard, and I think it tells us the location of Site B, if my - "

    There was a click as the phone lifted. He heard the sound of breathing.

    "Richard?" he said.

    "No," said the voice, "this is Thorne. And I think you better get over here right away."

The Five Deaths

"I knew it," Malcolm said, coming into Levine's apartment, and glancing quickly around. "I knew he would do something like this. You know how impetuous he is. I said to him, don't go until we have all the information. But I should have known. Of course, he went."

    "Yes, he did."

    "Ego," Malcolm said, shaking his head. "Richard has to be first. Has to figure it out first, has to get there first. I'm very concerned, he could ruin everything. This impulsive behavior: you realize it's a storm in the brain, neurons on the edge of chaos. Obsession is just a variety of addiction. But what scientist ever had self-control? They instruct them in school: it's bad form to be balanced. They forget Neils Bohr was not only a great physicist but an Olympic athlete. These days they all try to be nerds. It's the professional style."

    Thorne looked at Malcolm thoughtfully. He thought he detected a competitive edge. He said, "Do you know which island he went to?"

    "No. I do not." Malcolm was stalking around the apartment, taking things in. "The last time we talked, we had narrowed it down to five islands, all in the south. But we hadn't decided which one."

    Thorne pointed to the wallboard, the satellite images. "These islands here?"

    "Yes," Malcolm said, looking briefly. "They're strung out in an arc, all about ten miles offshore from the bay of Puerto Cortés. Supposedly they're all uninhabited. Local people call them the Five Deaths."

    "Why?" Kelly said.

    "Some old Indian story," Malcolm said. "Something about a brave warrior captured by a king who offered him his choice of deaths. Burning, drowning, crushing, hanging, decapitation. The warrior said he would take them all, and he went from island to island, experiencing the various challenges. Sort of a New World version of the labors of Hercules - "

    "So that's what it is!" Kelly said, and ran out of the room.

    Malcolm looked blank.

    He turned to Thorne, who shrugged.

    Kelly returned, carrying the German children's book in her hand. She gave it to Malcolm.

    "Yes," he said. "Die Fünf Todesarten. The Five Ways of Death. Interesting that it is in German...."

    "He has lots of German books," Kelly said.

    "Does he? That bastard. He never told me."

    "That means something?" Kelly said.

    "Yes, it means a lot. Hand me that magnifying glass, would you?"

    Kelly gave him a magnifying glass from the desk. "What does it mean?"

    "The Five Deaths are ancient volcanic islands," he said. "Which means that they are geologically very rich. Back in the twenties, the Germans wanted to mine them." He peered at the images, squinting. "Ah. Yes, these are the islands, no question. Matanceros, Muerte, Tacaño, Sorna, Pena...All names of death and destruction...All right. I think we may be close. Do we have any satellite pictures with spectrographic analyses of the cloud cover?"

    Arby said, "Is that going to help you find Site B?"

    "What?" Malcolm spun around. "What do you know about Site B?"

    Arby was sitting at the computer, still working. "Nothing. Just that Dr. Levine was looking for Site B. And it was the name in the files."

    "What files?"

    "I've recovered some InGen files from this computer. And, searching through old records, I found references to Site B....But they're pretty confusing. Like this one." He leaned back, to let Malcolm look at the screen.

Summary: Plan Revisions #35

PRODUCTION        (SITE B)_______________________________________________                                                                                          

AIR HANDLERS            Grade 5 to Grade 7

LABSTRUCTURE            400 cmm to 510 cmm

BIO SECURITY            Level PK/3 to Level PK/5

CONVEYOR RATES          3 mpm to 2.5 mpm

HOLDING PENS            13 hectares to 26 hectares

STAFF             17 (4 admin) to 19 (4 admin)

COMM PROTOCOL           ET(VX) to RDT (VX)

    Malcolm frowned. "Curious, but not very helpful. It doesn't tell us which island - or even if it's on an island at all. What else have you got?"

    "Well..." Arby flicked keys. "Let's see. There's this."

SITE B ISLAND NETWORK   NODAL POINTS

ZONE I (RIVER)                1-8

ZONE 2 (COAST)                9-16

ZONE 3 (RIDGE)                17-24

ZONE 4 (VALLEY)               25-32

    Malcolm said, "Okay, so it's an island. And Site B has a network- but a network of what? Computers?"

    Arby said, "I don't know. Maybe a radio network."

    "For what purpose?" Malcolm said. "What would a radio network be used for? This isn't very helpful."

    Arby shrugged. He took it as a challenge. He began typing furiously again. Then said, "Wait!...Here's another one ...if I can just format it....There! Got it!"

    He moved away from the screen, so the others could see.

    Malcolm looked and said, "Very good. Very good!"

SITE B LEGENDS

EAST WING               WEST WING               LOADING BAY

LABORATORY        ASSEMBLY BAY            ENTRANCE

OUTLYING                MAIN CORE               GEO TURBINE

CONVENIENCE STORE WORKER VILLAGE          GEO CORE

GAS STATION       POOL/TENNIS       PUTTING GREENS

MGRS HOUSE        JOG PATH                GAS LINES

SECURITY ONE            SECURITY TWO            THERMAL LINES

RIVER DOCK        BOATHOUSE         SOLAR ONE

SWAMP ROAD        RIVER ROAD        RIDGE ROAD

MTN VIEW ROAD           CLIFF ROAD              HOLDING PENS

    "Now we're getting somewhere," Malcolm said, scanning the listing. "Can you print this out?"

    "Sure." Arby was beaming. "Is it really good?"

    "It really is, " Malcolm said.

    Kelly looked at Arby and said, "Arb. Those're the text labels that go with a map."

    "Yeah, I think so. Pretty neat, huh?" He pushed a button, sending the image to the printer.

    Malcolm peered at the listing some more, then turned his attention back to the satellite maps, looking closely at each one with the magnifying glass. His nose was just inches from the photographs.

    "Arb," Kelly said, "don't just sit there. Come on! Recover the map! That's what we need!"

    "I don't know if I can," Arby said. "It's a proprietary thirty-two-bit format....I mean, it's a big job."

    "Stop whining, Arb. Just do it."

    "Never mind," Malcolm said. He stepped away from the satellite images pinned on the wall. "It's not important."

    "It's not?" Arby said, a little wounded.

    "No, Arby. You can stop. Because, from what you've already discovered, I am quite certain we can identify the island, right now."

James

Ed James yawned, and pushed the earpiece tighter into his ear. He wanted to make sure he got all this. He shifted in the driver's seat of his gray Taurus, trying to get comfortable, trying to stay awake. The small tape recorder was spinning in his lap, next to his notepad, and the crumpled papers from two Big Macs. James looked across the street at Levine's apartment building. The lights were on in the third-floor apartment.

    And the bug he had placed there last week was working fine. Through his earpiece, he heard one of the kids say, "How?"

    And then the crippled guy, Malcolm, said, "The essence of verification is multiple lines of reasoning that converge at a single point."

    "Meaning what?" the kid said.

    Malcolm said, "Just look at the Landsat pictures."

    On his notepad, James wrote LANDSAT.

    "We already looked at those," the girl said.

    James felt foolish not to have realized earlier that these two kids were working for Levine. He remembered them well, they were in the class Levine taught. There was a short black kid and a gawky white girl. Just kids: maybe eleven or twelve. He should have realized.

    Not that it mattered now, he thought. He was getting the information anyway. James reached across the dashboard and plucked out the last two French fries, and ate them, even though they were cold.

    "Okay," he heard Malcolm say. "It's this island here. This is the island Levine went to."

    The girl said doubtfully, "You think so? This is...Isla Sorna."   

    James wrote ISLA SORNA.

    "That's our island," Malcolm said. "Why? Three independent reasons. First, it's privately owned, so it hasn't been thoroughly searched by the Costa Rican government. Second, privately owned by whom? By the Germans, who leased rights to mineral excavations, back in the twenties."

    "All the German books."

    "Exactly. Third, from Arby's list - and from another independent source - it is clear that there is volcanic gas located at Site B. So, which islands have volcanic gas? Take the magnifying glass and look for yourself. Turns out, only one island does,"

    "You mean this here?" the girl said. "Right. That's volcanic smoke."

    "How do you know?"

    "Spectrographic analysis. See this spike here? That's elementary sulfur in the cloud cover. There aren't really any sources for sulfur except volcanic sources."

    "What's this other spike?" the girl said.

    "Methane," Malcolm said. "Apparently there is - a fairly large source of methane gas."

    "Is that also volcanic?" Thorne said.

    "It might be. Methane is released from volcanic activity, but most commonly during active eruptions. The other possibility is, it might be organic.

    "Organic? Meaning what?"

    "Large herbivores, and - "

    Then there was something that James couldn't hear, and the kid said, "Do you want me to finish this recovery, or not?" He sounded annoyed.

    "No," Thorne said. "Never mind now, Arby. We know what we have to do. Let's go, kids!"

    James looked up at the apartment and saw the lights being turned off. A few minutes later, Thorne and the kids appeared at the front entrance, on the street level. They got in a Jeep, and drove off. Malcolm went to his own car, climbed in awkwardly, and drove away in the opposite direction.

    James considered following Malcolm, but he had something else to do now. He turned on the car ignition, picked up the phone, and dialed.

Field Systems

Half an hour later, when they got back to Thorne's Office, Kelly stared, stunned. Most of the workers were gone, and the shed had been cleaned up. The two trailers and the Explorer stood side by side, freshly painted dark green, and ready to go.

    They're finished!"

    "I told you they would be," Thorne said. He turned to his chief foreman, Eddie Carr, a stocky young man in his twenties. "Eddie, where are  we?"

    "Just wrapping up, Doc," Eddie said. "Paint's still wet in a few places, but it should be dry by morning."

    "We can't wait until morning. We're moving out now."

    "We are?"

    Arby and Kelly exchanged glances. This was news to them, too.

    Thorne said, "I'll need you to drive one of these, Eddie. We've got to be at the airport by midnight."

    "But I thought we were field testing.

    "No time for that. We're going right to the location." The front door buzzed. "That'll be Malcolm, probably. He pushed the button to unlock the door.

    "You're not going to field test?" Eddie said, with a worried look. "I think you better shake them down, Doc. We made some pretty complex modifications here, and - "

    "There's no time," Malcolm said, coming in. "We have to go right away." He turned to Thorne. "I'm very worried about him."

    "Eddie!" Thorne said. "Did the exit papers come in?"

    "Oh sure, we've had them for the last two weeks,"

    "Well, get them, and call Jenkins, tell him to meet us at the airport, and do the details for us. I want to be off the ground in four hours."

    "Jeez, Doc - "

    "Just do it."

    Kelly said, "You're going to Costa Rica?"

    "That's right. We've got to get Levine. If it's not too late."

    "We're coming with you," Kelly said.

    "Right," Arby said. "We are."

    "Absolutely not," Thorne said. "It's out of the question."

    "But we earned it!"

    "Dr. Levine talked to our parents!"

    "We already have permission!"

    "You have permission," Thorne said severely, "to go on a field test in the woods a hundred miles from here. But we're not doing that. We're going someplace that might be very dangerous, and you're not coming with us, and that's final."

    "But - "   

    "Kids," Thorne said. "Don't piss me off. I'm going to go make a phone call. You get your stuff together. You're going home."

    And he turned and walked away.

    "Gee," Kelly said.

    Arby stuck his tongue out at the departing Thorne and muttered, "What an asshole."

    "Get with the program, Arby," Thorne said, not looking back. "You two guys are going home. Period."

    He went into his office and slammed the door.

    Arby stuck his hands in his pockets. "They couldn't have figured it out without our help."

    "I know, Arb," she said. "But we can't make him take us."

    They turned to Malcolm. "Dr. Malcolm, can you please - "

    "Sorry," Malcolm said. "I can't."

    "But - "

    "The answer is no, kids. It's just too dangerous."

Dejected, they drifted over to the vehicles, gleaming beneath the ceiling lights. The Explorer with the black photovoltaic panels on the roof and hood, the inside crammed with glowing electronic equipment. Just looking at the Explorer gave them a sense of adventure - an adventure they would not be part of.

    Arby peered into the larger trailer, cupping his eyes over the window. "Wow, look at this!"

    "I'm going in," Kelly said, and she opened the door. She was momentarily surprised at how solid and heavy it was. Then she climbed up the steps into the trailer.

    Inside, the trailer was fitted out with gray upholstery and much more electronic equipment. It was divided into sections, for different laboratory functions. The main area was a biological lab, with specimen trays, dissecting pans, and microscopes that connected to video monitors. The lab also included biochemistry equipment, spectrometers, and a series of automated sample-analyzers. Next to it there was an extensive computer section, a bank of processors, and a communications section. All the lab equipment was miniaturized, and built into small tables that slid into the walls, and then bolted down.

    "This is cool," Arby said.

    Kelly didn't answer. She was looking closely at the lab. Dr. Levine had designed this trailer, apparently with a very specific purpose. There was no provision for geology, or botany, or chemistry, or lots of other things that a field team might be expected to study. It wasn't a general scientific lab at all. There really seemed to be just a biology unit, and a large computer unit.

    Biology, and computers.

    Period.

    What had this trailer been built to study?

    Set in the wall was a small bookshelf, the books held in place with a Velcro strap. She scanned the titles: Modeling Adaptive Biological Systems, Vertebrate Behavioral Dynamics, Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems, Dinosaurs of North America, Preadaptation and Evolution....It seemed like a strange set of books to take on a wilderness expedition; if there was a logic behind it, she didn't see it.

    She moved on. At intervals along the walls, she could see where the trailer had been strengthened; dark carbon-honeycomb strips ran up the walls. She had overheard Thorne saying it was the same material used in supersonic let fighters. Very light and very strong. And she noticed that all the windows had been replaced with that special glass with fine wire mesh inside it.

    Why was the trailer so strong?

    It made her a little uneasy, when she thought about it. She remembered the telephone call with Dr. Levine, earlier in the day. He had said he was surrounded.

    Surrounded by what?

    He had said: I can smell them, especially at night.

    What was he referring to?

    Who was them?

    Still uneasy, Kelly moved toward the back of the trailer, where there was a homey little living area, complete with gingham curtains on the windows. Compact kitchen, a toilet, and four beds. Storage compartments above and below the beds. There was even a little walk-in shower. It was nice.

    From there, she went through the accordion pleating that connected the two trailers. It was a little bit like the connection between two railway cars, a short transitional passage. She emerged inside the second trailer, which seemed to be mostly utility storage: extra tires, spare parts, more lab equipment, shelves and cabinets. All the extra supplies that meant an expedition to some far-off place. There was even a motorcycle hanging off the back of the trailer. She tried some of the cabinets, but they were locked.

    But even here there were extra reinforcing strips as well. This section had also been built especially strong.

    Why? she wondered. Why so strong?

    "Look at this," Arby said, standing before a wall unit. It was a complex of glowing LED displays and lots of buttons, and looked to Kelly like a complicated thermostat.

    "What does it do?" Kelly said.

    "Monitors the whole trailer," he said. "You can do everything from here. All the systems, all the equipment. And look, there's TV...." He pushed a button, and a monitor glowed to life. It showed Eddie walking toward them, across the floor.

    "And, hey, what's this?" Arby said. At the bottom of the display was a button with a securitv cover. He flipped the cover open. The button was silver and said DEF.

    "Hey, I bet this is that bear defense he was talking about."

    A moment later, Eddie opened the trailer door and said, "You better stop that, you'll drain the batteries. Come on, now. You heard what the doc said. Time for you kids to go home."

    Kelly and Arby exchanged glances.

    "Okay," Kelly said. "We're going."

    Reluctantly, they left the trailer.

They walked across the shed to Thorne's office to say goodbye. Arby said, "I wish he'd let us go."

    "Me, too."

    "I don't want to stay home for break," he said. "They're just going to be working all the time." He meant his parents.

    "I know."

    Kelly didn't want to go home, either. This idea of a field test during spring break was perfect for her, because it got her out of the house, and out of a bad situation. Her mother did data entry in an insurance company during the day, and at night she worked as a waitress at Denny's. So her mom was always busy at her jobs, and her latest boyfriend, Phil, tended to hang around the house a lot at night. It had been okay when Emily was there, too, but now Emily was studying nursing at the community college, so Kelly was alone in the house. And Phil was sort of creepy. But her mother liked Phil, so she never wanted to hear Kelly say anything bad about him. She just told Kelly to grow up.

    So now Kelly went to Thorne's office, hoping against hope that at the last minute he would relent. He was on the phone, his back to them. On the screen of his computer, they saw one of the satellite images they had taken from Levine's apartment. Thorne was zooming in on the image, successive magnifications. They knocked on the door, opened it a little.

    "Bye, Dr. Thorne."

    "See you, Dr. Thorne."

    Thorne turned, holding the phone to his ear. "Bye, kids." He gave a brief wave.

    Kelly hesitated. "Listen, could we just talk to you for a minute about - "

    Thorne shook his head. "No."

    "But - "  

    "No, Kelly. I've got to place this call now," he said. "It's already four a,m. in Africa, and in a little while she'll go to sleep."

    "Who?"

    "Sarah Harding."

    "Sarah Harding is coming, too?" she said, lingering at the door.

    "I don't know." Thorne shrugged. "Have a good vacation, kids. See you in a week. Thanks for your help. Now get out of here." He looked across the shed. "Eddie, the kids are leaving. Show them to the door, and lock them out! Get me those papers! And pack a bag, you're coming with me!" Then in a different voice he said, "Yes, operator, I'm still waiting."

    And he turned away.

Harding

Through the night-vision goggles, the world appeared in shades of fluorescent green. Sarah Harding stared out at the African savannah. Directly ahead, above the high grass, she saw the rocky outcrop of a kopje. Bright-green pinpoints glowed back from the boulders. Probably rock hyraxes, she thought, or some other small rodent.

    Standing up in her jeep, wearing a sweatshirt against the cool night air, feeling the weight of the goggles, she turned her head slowly. She could hear the yelping in the night, and she was trying to locate the source.

    Even from her high vantage point, standing up in the vehicle, she knew the animals would be hidden from direct view. She turned slowly north, looking for movement in the grass. She saw none. She looked back quickly, the green world swirling momentarily. Now she faced south.

    And she saw them.

    The grass rippled in a complex pattern as the pack raced forward, yelping and barking, prepared to attack. She caught a glimpse of the female she called Face One, or Fl. Fl was distinguished by a white streak between her eyes. F1 loped along, in the peculiar sideways gait of hyenas; her teeth were bared; she glanced back at the rest of the pack, noting their position.

    Sarah Harding swung the glasses through the darkness, looking ahead of the pack. She saw the prey: a herd of African buffalo, standing belly-deep in the grass, agitated. They were bellowing and stamping their feet.

    The hyenas yelped louder, a pattern of sound that would confuse the prey. They rushed through the herd, trying to break it up, trying to separate the calves from their mothers. African buffalo looked dull and stupid, but in fact they were among the most dangerous large African mammals, heavy powerful creatures with sharp horns and notoriously mean dispositions. The hyenas could not hope to bring down an adult, unless it was injured or sick.

    But they would try to take a calf

    Sitting behind the wheel of the Jeep, Makena, her assistant, said, "You want to move closer?"

    "No, this is fine."

    In fact, it was more than fine. Their jeep was on a slight rise and they had a better-than-average view. With any luck, she would record the entire attack pattern. She turned on the video camera, mounted on a tripod five feet above her head, and dictated rapidly into the tape recorder.

    "Fl south, F2 and F5 flanking, twenty yards. F3 center. F6 circling wide cast. Can't see F7. F8 circling north. Fl straight through. Disrupting. Herd moving, stamping. There's F7. Straight through. F8 angling through from the north. Coming out, circling again."

    This was classic hyena behavior. The lead animals ran through the herd, while others circled it, then came in from the sides. The buffalo couldn't keep track of their attackers. She listened to the herd bellowing, even as the group panicked, broke its tight clustered formation. The big animals moved apart, turning, looking. Harding couldn't see the calves; they were below the grass. But she could hear their plaintive cries.

    Now the hyenas came back. The buffalo stamped their feet, lowered their big heads menacingly. The grass rippled as the hyenas circled, yelping and barking, the sounds more staccato. She caught a brief glimpse of female F8, her jaws already red. But Harding hadn't seen the actual attack.

    The buffalo herd moved a short distance to the east, where it regrouped. One female buffalo now stood apart from the herd. She bellowed continuously at the hyenas. They must have taken her calf

    Harding felt frustrated. It had happened so swiftly - too swiftly - which could only mean that the hyenas had been lucky, or the calf was injured. Or perhaps very young, even newborn; a few of the buffalo were still calving. She would have to review the videotape, to try and reconstruct what had happened. The perils of studying fast-moving nocturnal animals, she thought.

    But there was no question they had taken an animal. All the hyenas were clustered around a single area of grass; they yelped and jumped. She saw F3, and then F5, their muzzles bloody. Now the pups came lip, squealing to get at the kill. The adults immediately made room for them, helped them to eat. Sometimes they pulled away flesh from the carcass, and held it so the young ones could eat.

    Their behavior was familiar to Sarah Harding, who had become in recent years the foremost expert on hyenas in the world. When she first reported her findings, she was greeted with disbelief and even outrage from colleagues, who disputed her results in very personal terms. She was attacked for being a woman, for being attractive, for having "an overbearing feminist perspective." The University reminded her she was on tenure track. Colleagues shook their heads. But Harding had persisted, and slowly, over time, as more data accumulated, her view of hyenas had come to be accepted.

    Still, hyenas would never be appealing creatures, she thought, watching them feed. They were ungainly, heads too big and bodies sloping, coats ragged and mottled, gait awkward, vocalizations too reminiscent of an unpleasant laugh. In an increasingly urban world of concrete skyscrapers, wild animals were romanticized, classified as noble or ignoble, heroes or villains. And in this media-driven world, hyenas were simply not photogenic enough to be admirable. Long since cast as the laughing villains of the African plain, they were hardly thought worth a systematic study until Harding had begun her own research.

    What she had discovered cast hyenas in a very different light. Brave hunters and attentive parents, they lived in a remarkably complex social structure - and a matriarchy as well. As for their notorious yelping vocalizations, they actually represented an extremely sophisticated form of communication.

    She heard a roar, and through her night-vision goggles saw the first of the lions approaching the kill. It was a large female, circling closer. The hyenas barked and snapped at the lioness, guiding their own pups off into the grass. Within a few moments, other lions appeared, and settled down to feed on the hyenas' kill.

    Now, lions, she thought. There was a truly nasty animal. Although called the king of beasts, lions in truth were actually vile and -

    The phone rang.

    "Makena," she said.

    The phone rang again. Who could be calling her now?

    She frowned. Through the goggles, she saw the lionesses look up, heads turning in the night.

    Makena was fumbling beneath the dashboard, looking for the phone, It rang three more times before he found it.

    She heard him say, "Jambo, mzee." Yes, Dr. Harding is here." He handed the phone up to her. "It's Dr. Thorne."

    Reluctantly, she removed her night goggles, and took the phone. She knew Thorne well; he had designed most of the equipment in her Jeep. "Doc, this better be important."

    "It is," Thorne said. "I'm calling about Richard."

    "What about him?" She caught his concern, but didn't understand why. Lately, Levine had been a pain in the neck, telephoning her almost daily from California, picking her brains about field work with animals. He had lots of questions about hides, and blinds, data protocols, record-keeping, it went on and on....

    "Did he ever tell you what he intended to study?" Thorne asked.

    "No," she said. "Why?"

    "Nothing at all?"

    "No," Harding said. "He was very secretive. But I gathered he'd located an animal population that he could use to make some point about biological systems. You know how obsessive he is. Why?"

    "Well, he's missing, Sarah. Malcolm and I think he's in some kind of trouble. We've located him on an island in Costa Rica, and we're going to get him now."

    "Now?" she said.

    "Tonight. We're flying to San José in a few hours. Ian's going with me. We want you to come, too."

    "Doc," she said. "Even if I took a flight out of Seronera tomorrow morning to Nairobi, it'd take me almost a day to get there. And that's if I got lucky. I mean - "

    "You decide," Thorne said, interrupting. "I'll give you the details, and you decide what you want to do."

    He gave her the information, and she wrote it on the notepad strapped to her wrist. Then Thorne rang off.

    She stood staring out at the African night, feeling the cool breeze on her face. Off in the darkness, she heard the growl of the lions at the kill. Her work was here. Her life was here.

    Makena said, "Dr. Harding? What do we do?"

    "Go back," she said. "I have to pack."

    "You're leaving?"

    "Yes," she said. "I'm leaving."

Message

Thorne drove to the airport, the lights of San Francisco disappearing behind them. Malcolm sat in the passenger seat. He looked back at the Explorer driving behind them and said, "Does Eddie know what this is all about?"

    "Yes," Thorne said. "But I'm not sure he believes it."

    "And the kids don't know?"

    "No," Thorne said.

    There was a beeping alongside him. Thorne pulled out his little black Envoy, a radio pager. A light was flashing. He flipped up the screen, and handed it to Malcolm. "Read it for me."

    "It's from Arby," Malcolm said. "Says, 'Have a good trip. If you want us, call. We'll be standing by if you need our help.' And he gives his phone number."

    Thorne laughed. "You got to love those kids. They never give up. Then he frowned, as a thought occurred to him. "What's the time on that message?"

    "Four minutes ago," Malcolm said. "Came in via netcom."

    "Okay. Just checking."

    They turned right, toward the airport. They saw the lights in the distance. Malcolm stared forward gloomily. "It's very unwise for us to be rushing off like this. It's not the right way to go about it."

    Thorne said, "We should be all right. As long as we have the right island."

    "We do," Malcolm said.

    "How do you know?"

    "The most important clue was something I didn't want the kids to know about. A few days ago, Levine saw the carcass of one of the animals."

    "Oh?"

    "Yes. He had a chance to look at it, before the officials burned it. And he discovered that it was tagged. He cut the tag off and sent it to me."

    "Tagged? You mean like - "

    "Yes. Like a biological specimen. The tag was old, and it showed pitting from sulfuric acid."

    "Must be volcanic," Thorne said.

    "Exactly."

    "And you say it was an old tag?"

    "Several years," Malcolm said. "But the most interesting finding was the way the animal died. Levine concluded the animal had been injured while it was still alive - a deep slashing cut in the leg that went right down to the bone."

    Thorne said, "You're saying the animal was injured by another dinosaur.

    "Yes. Exactly.

    They drove a moment in silence. "Who else besides us knows about this island?"

    "I don't know," Malcolm said. "But somebody's trying to find out. My office was broken into today, and photographed."

    "Great." Thorne sighed. "But you didn't know where the island was, did you?"

    "No. I hadn't put it together yet."

    "Do you think anybody else has?"

    "No," Malcolm said. "We re on our own."

Exploitation

Lewis Dodgson threw open the door marked ANIMAL QUARTERS, and immediately all the dogs began barking. Dodgson walked down the corridor between the rows of cages, stacked ten feet high on both sides. The building was large; the Biosyn Corporation of Cupertino, California, required an extensive animal-testing facility.

    Walking alongside him, Rossiter, the head of the company, gloomily brushed the lapels of his Italian suit. "I hate this fucking place," he said. "Why did you want me to come here?"

    "Because," Dodgson said. "We need to talk about the future."

    "Stinks in here," Rossiter said. He glanced at his watch. "Get on with it, Lew."

     "We can talk in here." Dodgson led him to a glass-walled superintendent's booth, in the center of the building. The glass cut down the sound of the barking. But through the windows, thev could look out at the rows of animals.

    "It's simple," Dodgson said, starting to pace, "But I think it's important."

    Lewis Dodgson was forty-five years old, bland-faced and balding. His features were youthful, and his manner was mild. But appearances were deceiving - the baby-faced Dodgson was one of the most ruthless and aggressive geneticists of his generation. Controversy had dogged his career: as a graduate student at Hopkins, he had been dismissed for planning human gene therapy without FDA permission. Later, after joining Biosyn, he had conducted a controversial rabies-vaccine test in Chile - the illiterate farmers who were the subjects were never informed they were being tested.

    In each case, Dodgson explained that he was a scientist in a hurry, and could not be held back by regulations drawn up for lesser souls. He called himself "results-oriented," which really meant he did whatever he considered necessary to achieve his goal. He was also a tireless self-promoter. Within the company, Dodgson presented himself as a researcher, even though he lacked the ability to do original research, and had never done any. His intellect was fundamentally derivative; he never conceived of anything until someone else had thought of it first.

    He was very good at "developing" research, which meant stealing someone else's work at an early stage. In this, he was without scruple and without peer. For many years he had run the reverse-engineering section at Biosyn, which in theory examined competitors' products and determined how they were made. But in practice, "reverse engineering" involved a great deal of industrial espionage.

    Rossiter, of course, had no illusions about Dodgson. He disliked him, and avoided him as much as possible. Dodgson was always taking chances, cutting corners; he made Rossiter uneasy. But Rossiter also knew that modern biotechnology was highly competitive. To stay competitive, every company needed a man like Dodgson. And Dodgson was very good at what he did.

    "I'll come right to the pint," Dodgson said, turning to Rossiter. "If we act quickly, I believe we have an opportunity to acquire the InGen technology."

    Rossiter sighed. "Not again...."

    "I know, Jeff. I know how you feel. I admit, there is some history here."

    "History? The only history is you failed - time and again. We've tried this, back door and front door. Hell, we even tried to buy the company when it was in Chapter 11, because you told us it would be available. But it turned out it wasn't. The Japanese wouldn't sell."

    "I understand, Jeff. But let's not forget - "

    "What I can't forget," Rossiter said, "is that we paid seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars to your friend Nedry, and have nothing to show for it."

    "But Jeff - "

    "Then we paid five hundred thousand to that Dai-Ichl marriage broker. Nothing to show for that, either. Our attempts to acquire InGen technology have been a complete fucking failure. That's what I can't forget."

    "But the point," Dodgson said, "is that we kept trying for a good reason. This technology is vital to the future of the company."

    "So you say."

    "The world is changing, Jeff. I'm talking about solving one of the major problems this company faces in the twenty-first century."

    "Which is?"

    Dodgson pointed out the window, at the barking dogs. "Animal testing. Let's face it, Jeff. every year, we get more pressure not to use animals for testing and research. Every year, more demonstrations, more break-ins, more bad press. First it was just simple-minded zealots and Hollywood celebrities. But now it's a bandwagon: even university philosophers are beginning to argue that it's unethical for monkeys, and dogs, and even rats to be subjected to the indignities of laboratory research. We've even had some protests about our 'exploitation' of squid, even though they're on dinner tables all over the world. I'm telling you, Jeff, there's no end to this trend. Eventually, somebody's going to say we can't even exploit bacteria to make genetic products."

    " Oh, come on."

    "Just wait. It'll happen. And it'll shut us down. Unless we have a genuinely created animal. Consider - an animal that is extinct, and is brought back to life, is for all practical purposes not an animal at all. It can't have any rights. It's already extinct. So if it exists, it can only be something we have made. We made it, we patent it, we own it. And it is a perfect research testbed. And we believe that the enzyme and hormoiie systems of dinosaurs are identical to mammalian systems. In the future, drugs can be tested on small dinosaurs as successfully as they are now tested on dogs and rats-with much less risk of legal challenge."

    Rossiter was shaking his head. "You think."

    "I know. They're basically big lizards, Jeff. And nobody loves a lizard. They're not like these cute doggies that lick your hand and break your heart. Lizards have no personality. They're snakes with legs."

    Rossiter sighed.

    "Jeff. We're talking about real freedom, here. Because, at the moment, everything to do with living animals is tied up in legal and moral knots. Big-game hunters can't shoot a lion or an elephant - the same animals their fathers and grandfathers used to shoot, and then pose proudly for a photo. Now there are forms, licenses, expenses - and plenty of guilt. These days, you don't dare shoot a tiger and admit it afterward. In the modern world, it's a much more serious transgression to shoot a tiger than to shoot your parents. Tigers have advocates. But now imagine: a specially stocked hunting preserve, maybe somewhere in Asia, where individuals of wealth and importance could hunt tyrannosaurs and triceratops in a natural setting. It would be an incredibly desirable attraction. How many hunters have a stuffed elk head on their wall? The world's full of them. But how many can claim to have a snarling tyranosaurus head, hanging above the wet bar?"

    "You're not serious."

    "I'm trying to make a point here, Jeff: these animals are totally exploitable. We can do anything we want with them."

    Rossiter stood up from the table, put his hands in his pockets. He sighed, then looked up at Dodgson.

    "The animals still exist?"

    Dodgson nodded slowly.

    "And you know where they are?"

    Dodgson nodded.

    "Okay," Rossiter said. "Do it."

    He turned toward the door, then paused, looked back. "But, Lew," he said. "Let's be clear. This is it. This is absolutely the last time. Either you get the animals now, or it's over. This is the last time. Got it?"

    "Don't worry," Dodgson said. "This time, I'll get them."

THIRD CONFIGURATION

"In the intermediate phase, swiftly developing complexity

within the system hides the risk of imminent chaos. But the risk is there."

IAN MALCOLM

Costa Rica

There was a drenching downpour in Puerto Cortés. Rain drummed on the roof of the little metal shed beside the airfield. Dripping wet, Thorne stood and waited while the Costa Rican official went over the papers, again and again. Rodríguez was his name, and he was just a kid in his twenties, wearing an ill-fitting uniform, terrified of making a mistake.

    Thorne looked out at the runway, where, in the soft dawn light, the cargo containers were being clamped to the bellies of two big Huey helicopters. Eddie Carr was out there in the rain with Malcolm, shouting as the workmen secured the clamps.

    Rodríguez shuffled the papers. "Now, Señor Thorne, according to this, your destination is Isla Sorna..."

    "That's right."

    "And your containers have only vehicles?"

    "Yes, that's right. Research vehicles."

    "Sorna is a primitive place. There is no petrol, no supplies, not even any roads to speak of...."

    "Have you been there'?"

    "Myself, no. People here have no interest in this island. It is a wild spot, rock and jungle. And there is no place for a boat to land, except in very special weather conditions. For example, today one cannot go there.

    "I understand," Thorne said.

    "I just wish that you will be prepared," Rodríguez said, "for the difficulties you will find there.

    "I think we're prepared."

    "You are taking adequate petrol for your vehicles?"

    "Thorne sighed. Why bother to explain? "Yes, we are."

    "And there are just three of you, Dr. Malcolm, yourself, and your assistant, Señor Carr?"

    "Correct."

    "And your intended stay is less than one week?"

    "That's correct. More like two days: with anv luck, we expect to be off the island sometime tomorrow."

    Rodríguez shuffled the papers again, as if looking for a hidden cule. "Well..."

    "Is there a problem?" Thorne said, glancing at his watch.

    "No problem, señor. Your permits are signed by the Director General of the Biological Preserves. They are in order.... " Rodríguez hesitated. "But it is very unusual, that such a permit would be granted at all."

    "Why is that?"

    "I do not know the details, but there was some trouble on one of the islands a few years ago, and since then the Department of Biological Preserves has closed all the Pacific islands to tourists."

    "We're not tourists," Thorne said.

    "I understand that, Señor Thorne." More shuffling of papers.

    Thorne waited.

    Out on the runway, the container clamps locked in place, and the containers lifted off the ground.

    "Very well, Señor Thorne," Rodríguez said finally, stamping the papers. "I wish you good luck."

    "Thank you," Thorne said. He tucked the papers in his pocket, ducked his head against the rain, and ran back out on the runway.