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 animal 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.


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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.


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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.


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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 modifying 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.


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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 under 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 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-hundred-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, modifying, crashing again. No theories, just actual testing. The way it ought to be.” Thorne’s dislike of theory was legendary.


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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—” “Hey, hey,” 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.


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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.


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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, he 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.”


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 Gutierrez 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 neat. 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 complexity of JP technology not be revealed announced made known. Mr. Hammond wishes to remind all departments that Production facility will not be topie 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 wing 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 Baja California and Ecuador in the east. 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, he 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 LAB STRUCTURE 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 Q 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 1 (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 LABORATORY OUTLYING CONVENIENCE STORE GAS STATION MGRS HOUSE SECURITY ONE RIVER DOCK SWAMP ROAD MTN VIEW ROAD WEST WING ASSEMBLY BAY MAIN CORE WORKER VILLAGE POOL/TENNIS JOG PATH SECURITY TWO BOATHOUSE RIVER ROAD CLIFF ROAD LOADING BAY ENTRANCE GEO TURBINE GEO CORE PUTTING GREENS GAS LINES THERMAL LINES SOLAR ONE RIDGE 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 jet 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 security 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 F1. F1 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. “F1 south, F2 and F5 flanking, twenty yards. F3 center. F6 circling wide east. Can’t see F7. F8 circling north. F1 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 up, 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, they 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 point,” 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-Ichi 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 hormone 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 tyrannosaurus 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.”


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 any luck, we expect to be off the island sometime tomorrow.” Rodríguez shuffled the papers again, as if looking for a hidden clue. “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. Three miles offshore, the helicopters broke through the coastal cloud layer, into early-morning sunlight. From the cockpit of the lead Huey, Thorne could look up and down the coast. He saw five islands at various distances offshore—harsh rocky pinnacles, rising out of rough blue sea.


The islands were each several miles apart, undoubtedly part of an old volcanic chain. He pressed the speaker button. “Which is Sorna?” The pilot pointed ahead. “We call them the Five Deaths,” he said. “Isla Muerte, Isla Matanceros, Isla Pena, Isla Tacaño, and Isla Sorna, which is the big one farthest north.” “Have you been there?” “Never, señor. But I believe there will be a landing site.” “How do you know?” “Some years ago, there were some flights there. I have heard the Americans would come, and fly there, sometimes.” “Not Germans?” “No, no. There have been no Germans since … I do not know. The World War. They were Americans that came.” “When was that?” “I am not sure. Perhaps ten years ago.” The helicopter turned north, passing over the nearest island. Thorne glimpsed rugged, volcanic terrain, overgrown with dense jungle. There was no sign of life, or of human habitation. “To the local people, these islands are not happy places,” the pilot said. “They say, no good comes from here.” He smiled. “But they do not know. They are superstitious Indians.” Now they were over open water, with Isla Sorna directly ahead. It was clearly an old volcanic crater: bare, reddish-gray rock walls, an eroded cone. “Where do the boats land?” The pilot pointed to where the sea surged and crashed against the cliffs. “On the east side of this island, there are many caves, made by the waves. Some of the local people call this Isla Gemido. It means ‘groan,’ from the sound of the waves inside the caves. Some of the caves go all the way through to the interior, and a boat can pass through at certain times. But not in weather as you see it now.” Thorne thought of Sarah Harding. If she was coming, she would land later today. “I have a colleague who may be arriving this afternoon,” he said. “Can you bring her out?” “I am sorry,” the pilot said. “We have a job in Golfo Juan. We will not be back until tonight.” “What can she do?” The pilot squinted at the sea. “Perhaps she can come by boat. The sea changes by the hour. She might have luck.” “And you will come back for us tomorrow?” “Yes, Señor Thorne. We will come in the early morning. It is the best time, for the winds.” The helicopter approached from the west, rising several hundred feet, moving over the rocky cliffs to reveal the interior of Isla Gemido. It appeared just like the others: volcanic ridges and ravines, heavily overgrown with dense jungle. It was beautiful from the air, but Thorne knew it would be dauntingly difficult to move through that terrain. He stared down, looking for roads. The helicopter thumped lower, circling the central area of the island. Thorne saw no buildings, no roads. The helicopter descended toward the jungle. The pilot said, “Because of the cliffs, the winds here are very bad. Many gusts and updrafts.


There is only one place on the island where it is safe to land.” He peered out the window. “Ah. Yes. There.” Thorne saw an open clearing, overgrown with tall grass. “We land there,” the pilot said.


Isla Sorna Eddie Carr stood in the tall grass of the clearing, turned away from the flying dust as the two helicopters lifted off the ground and rose into the sky. In a few moments they were small specks, their sound fading. Eddie shaded his eyes as he looked upward. In a forlorn voice he said, “When’re they coming back?” “Tomorrow morning,” Thorne said. “We’ll have found Levine by then.” “At least, we’d better,” Malcolm said. And then the helicopters were gone, disappearing over the high rim of the crater. Carr stood with Thorne and Malcolm in the clearing, enveloped in morning heat, and deep silence on the island. “Kind of creepy here,” Eddie said, pulling his baseball cap down lower over his eyes. Eddie Carr was twenty-four years old, raised in Daly City. Physically, he was dark-haired, compact and strong. His body was thick, the muscles bunched, but his hands were elegant, the fingers long and tapered. Eddie had a talent—Thorne would have said, a genius—for mechanical things. Eddie could build anything, and fix anything. He could see how things worked, just by looking at them. Thorne had hired him three years earlier, his first job out of community college. It was supposed to be a temporary job, earning money so he could go back to school and get an advanced degree. But Thorne had long since become dependent on Eddie. And Eddie, for his part, wasn’t much interested in going back to the books. At the same time, he hadn’t counted on anything like this, he thought, looking around him at the clearing. Eddie was an urban kid, accustomed to the action of the city, the honk of horns and the rush of traffic. This desolate silence made him uneasy. “Come on,” Thorne said, putting a hand on his shoulder, “let’s get started.” They turned to the cargo containers, left by the helicopter. They were sitting a few yards away, in the tall grass. “Can I help?” Malcolm said, a few yards away. “If you don’t mind, no,” Eddie said. “We’d better unpack these ourselves.” They spent half an hour unbolting the rear panels, lowering them to the ground, and entering the containers. After that, they took only a few minutes to release the vehicles. Eddie got behind the wheel of the Explorer and flicked on the ignition. There was hardly any sound, just a soft whirr of the vacuum pump starting up. Thorne said, “How’s your charge?” “Full,” Eddie said. “Batteries okay?” “Yeah. Seem fine.” Eddie was relieved. He had supervised the conversion of these vehicles to electric power, but it was a rush job, and they hadn’t had time to test them thoroughly afterward. And though it was true that electric cars employed less complex technology than the internal-combustion engine—that chugging relic of the nineteenth century—Eddie knew that taking untested equipment into the field was always risky. Especially when that equipment also used the latest technology.


That fact troubled Eddie more than he was willing to admit. Like most born mechanics, he was deeply conservative. He liked things to work—work, no matter what—and to him that meant using established, proven technology. Unfortunately, he had been voted down this time. Eddie had two particular areas of concern. One was the black photovoltaic panels, with their rows of octagonal silicon wafers, mounted on the roof and hood of the vehicles. These panels were efficient, and much less fragile than the old photovoltaics. Eddie had mounted them with special vibration-damping units of his own design. But the fact remained, if the panels were injured in any way, they would no longer be able to charge the vehicles, or run the electronics. All their systems would stop dead. His other concern was the batteries themselves. Thorne had selected the new lithium-ion batteries from Nissan, which were extremely efficient on a weight basis. But they were still experimental, which to Eddie was just a polite word for “unreliable.” Eddie had argued for backups; he had argued for a little gasoline-generator, just in case; he had argued for lots of things. And he had always been voted down. Under the circumstances, Eddie did the only sensible thing: he built in a few extras, and didn’t tell anybody about it. He was pretty sure Thorne knew he had done that. But Thorne never said anything. And Eddie never brought it up. But now that he was here, on this island in the middle of nowhere, he was glad he had. Because the fact was, you never knew. Thorne watched as Eddie backed the Explorer out of the container, and into the high grass. Eddie left the car in the middle of the clearing, where the sunlight would strike the panels and top up the charge. Thorne got behind the wheel of the first trailer, and backed it out. It was odd to drive a vehicle which was so quiet; the loudest sound was the tires on the metal container. And once it was on the grass, there was hardly any sound at all. Thorne climbed out, and linked up the two trailers, locking them together with the flexible steel accordion connector. Finally, he turned to the motorcycle. It, too, was electric; Thorne rolled it to the rear of the Explorer, lifted it onto brackets, hooked the power cord into the same system that ran the vehicle, and recharged the battery. He stepped back. “That does it.” In the hot, quiet clearing, Eddie stared toward the high circular rim of the crater, rising in the distance above the dense jungle. The bare rock shimmered in the morning heat, the walls forbidding and harsh. He had a sense of desolation, of entrapment. “Why would anyone ever come here?” he said. Malcolm, leaning on his cane, smiled. “To get away from it all, Eddie. Don’t you ever want to get away from it all?” “Not if I can help it,” Eddie said.


“Me, I always like a Pizza Hut nearby, you know what I mean?” “Well, you’re a ways from one now.” Thorne returned to the back panel of the trailer, and pulled out a pair of heavy rifles. Beneath the barrel of each hung two aluminum canisters, side by side. He handed one rifle to Eddie, showed the other to Malcolm. “You ever seen these?” “Read about them,” Malcolm said. “This is the Swedish thing?” “Right. Lindstradt air gun. Most expensive rifle in the world. Rugged, simple, accurate, and reliable. Fires a subsonic Fluger impact-delivery dart, containing whatever compound you want.” Thorne cracked open the cartridge bank, revealing a row of plastic containers filled with straw-colored liquid. Each cartridge was tipped with a three-inch needle. “We’ve loaded the enhanced venom of Conus purpurascens, the South Sea cone shell. It’s the most powerful neurotoxin in the world. Acts within a two-thousandth of a second. It’s faster than the nerve-conduction velocity. The animal’s down before it feels the prick of the dart.” “Lethal?” Thorne nodded. “No screwing around here. Just remember, you don’t want to shoot yourself in the foot with this, because you’ll be dead before you realize that you’ve pulled the trigger.” Malcolm nodded. “Is there an antidote?” “No. But what’s the point? There’d be no time to administer it if there was.” “That makes things simple,” Malcolm said, taking the gun. “Just thought you ought to know,” Thorne said. “Eddie? Let’s get going.”


The Stream Eddie climbed into the Explorer. Thorne and Malcolm climbed into the cab of the trailer. A moment later, the radio clicked. Eddie said, “You putting up the database, Doc?” “Right now,” Thorne said. He plugged the optical disk into the dashboard slot. On the small monitor facing him, he saw the island appear, but it was largely obscured behind patches of cloud. “What good is that?” Malcolm said. “Just wait,” Thorne said. “It’s a system. It’s going to sum data.” “Data from what?” “Radar.” In a moment, a satellite radar image overlaid the photograph. The radar could penetrate the clouds. Thorne pressed a button, and the computer traced the edges, enhancing details, highlighting the faint spidery track of the road system. “Pretty slick,” Malcolm said. But to Thorne, he seemed tense. “I’ve got it,” Eddie said, on the radio. Malcolm said, “He can see the same thing?” “Yes. On his dashboard.” “But I don’t have the GPS,” Eddie said, anxiously. “Isn’t it working?” “You guys,” Thorne said. “Give it a minute. It’s reading the optical. Waystations are coming up.” There was a cone-shaped Global Positioning Sensor mounted in the roof of the trailer. Taking radio data from orbiting navigation satellites thousands of miles overhead, the GPS could calculate the position of the vehicles within a few yards. In a moment, a flashing red X appeared on the map of the island. “Okay,” Eddie said, on the radio. “I got it. Looks like a road leading out of the clearing to the north. That where we’re going?” “I’d say so,” Thorne said. According to the map, the road twisted several miles across the interior of the island, before finally reaching a place where all the roads seemed to meet. There was the suggestion of buildings there, but it was hard to be sure. “Okay, Doc. Here we go.” Eddie drove past him, and took the lead. Thorne stepped on the accelerator, and the trailer hummed forward, following the Explorer. Beside him, Malcolm was silent, fiddling with a small notebook computer on his lap. He never looked out the window. In a few moments, they had left the clearing behind, and were moving through dense jungle. Thorne’s panel lights flashed: the vehicle switched to its batteries. There wasn’t enough sunlight coming through the trees to power the trailer any more. They drove on. “How you doing, Doc?” Eddie said. “You holding charge?” “Just fine, Eddie.” “He sounds nervous,” Malcolm said. “Just worried about the equipment.” “The hell,” Eddie said. “I’m worried about me.” Although the road was overgrown and in poor condition, they made good progress. After about ten minutes, they came to a small stream, with muddy banks. The Explorer started across it, then stopped. Eddie got out, stepping over rocks in the water, walking back. “What is it?” “I saw something, Doc.” Thorne and Malcolm got out of the trailer, and stood on the banks of the stream. They heard the distant cries of what sounded like birds.


Malcolm looked up, frowning. “Birds?” Thorne said. Malcolm shook his head, no. Eddie bent over, and plucked a strip of cloth out of the mud. It was dark-green Gore-Tex, with a strip of leather sewn along one edge. “That’s from one of our expedition packs,” he said. “The one we made for Levine?” “Yes, Doc.” “You put a sensor in the pack?” Thorne asked. They usually sewed location sensors inside their expedition packs. “Yes.” “May I see that?” Malcolm asked. He took the strip of cloth and held it up to the light. He fingered the torn edge thoughtfully. Thorne unclipped a small receiver from his belt. It looked like an oversized pager. He stared at the liquid-crystal readout. “I’m not getting any signal.…” Eddie stared at the muddy bank. He bent over again. “Here’s another piece of cloth. And another. Seems like the pack was ripped into shreds, Doc.” Another bird cry floated toward them, distant, unworldly. Malcolm stared off in the distance, trying to locate its source. And then he heard Eddie say, “Uh-oh. We have company.” There were a half-dozen bright-green lizard-like animals, standing in a group near the trailer. They were about the size of chickens, and they chirped animatedly. They stood upright on their hind legs, balancing with their tails straight out. When they walked, their heads bobbed up and down in nervous little jerks, exactly like a chicken. And they made a distinctive squeaking sound, very reminiscent of a bird. Yet they looked like lizards with long tails. They had quizzical, alert faces, and they cocked their heads when they looked at the men. Eddie said, “What is this, a salamander convention?” The green lizards stood, watched. Several more appeared, from beneath the trailer, and from the foliage nearby. Soon there were a dozen lizards, watching and chittering. “Compys,” Malcolm said. “Procompsognathus triassicus, is the actual name.” “You mean these are—” “Yes. They’re dinosaurs.” Eddie frowned, stared. “I didn’t know they came so small,” he said finally. “Dinosaurs were mostly small,” Malcolm said. “People always think they were huge, but the average dinosaur was the size of a sheep, or a small pony.” Eddie said, “They look like chickens.” “Yes. Very bird-like.” “Is there any danger?” Thorne said. “Not really,” Malcolm said. “They’re small scavengers, like jackals. They feed on dead animals. But I wouldn’t get close. Their bite is mildly poisonous.” “I’m not getting close,” Eddie said. “They give me the creeps. It’s like they’re not scared.” Malcolm had noticed that, too. “I imagine it’s because there haven’t been any human beings on this island. These animals don’t have any reason to fear man.” “Well, let’s give them a reason,” Eddie said. He picked up a rock. “Hey!” Malcolm said. “Don’t do that! The whole idea is—” But Eddie had already thrown the rock. It landed near a cluster of compys, and the lizards ducked away. But the others hardly moved. A few of them hopped up and down, showing agitation.


But the group stayed where they were. They just chittered, and cocked their heads. “Weird,” Eddie said. He sniffed the air. “You notice that smell?” “Yes,” Malcolm said. “They have a distinctive odor.” “Rotten, is more like it,” Eddie said. “They smell rotten. Like something dead. And you ask me, it’s not natural, animals that don’t show fear like that. What if they have rabies or something?” “They don’t,” Malcolm said. “How do you know?” “Because only mammals carry rabies.” But even as he said it, he wondered if that was right. Warm-blooded animals carried rabies. Were the compys warm-blooded? He wasn’t sure. There was a rustling sound from above. Malcolm looked up at the canopy of trees overhead. He saw movement in the high foliage, as unseen small animals jumped from branch to branch. He heard squeaks and chirps, distinctly animal sounds. “Those aren’t birds, up there,” Thorne said. “Monkeys?” “Maybe,” Malcolm said. “I doubt it.” Eddie shivered. “I say we get out of here.” He returned to the stream, and climbed into the Explorer. Malcolm walked cautiously with Thorne back to the trailer entrance. The compys parted around them, but still did not run away. They stood all around their legs, chittering excitedly. Malcolm and Thorne climbed into the trailer and closed the doors, being careful not to shut them on the little creatures. Thorne sat behind the wheel, and turned on the motor. Ahead, they saw that Eddie was already driving the Explorer through the stream, and heading up the sloping ridge on the far side. “The, uh, procomso-whatevers,” Eddie said, over the radio. “They’re real, aren’t they?” “Oh yes,” Malcolm said softly. “They’re real.”