"Aw, that's a shame," Eddie said.
"Look," Levine said crossly. "It's not my problem if - "
Thorne said "You spent the night in the tree?"
Yes, and in the morning the raptors had gone. So I came down and started looking around. I found the lab, or whatever it is. Clearly, they abandoned it in a hurry, leaving some animals behind. I went through the building, and discovered that there is still power - some systems are still going, all these years later. And, most important, there is a network of security cameras. That's a very lucky break. So I decided to check on those cameras, and I was hard at work when you people barged in - "
"Wait a minute," Eddie said, "We came here to rescue you."
"I don't know why," Levine said. "I certainly never asked you to."
Thorne said, "it sounded like you did, over the phone."
"That is a misunderstanding," Levine said. "I was momentarily upset, because I couldn't work the phone. You've made that phone too complicated, Doc. That's the problem. So: shall we get started?"
Levine paused. He looked at the angry faces all around him. Malcolm turned to Thorne. "A great scientist," he said, "and a great human being."
"Look," Levine said, "I don't know what your problem is. The expedition was going to come to this island sooner or later. In this instance, sooner is better. Everything has turned out quite well, and, frankly, I don't see any reason to discuss it further. This is not the time for petty bickering. We have important things to do - and I think we should get started. Because this island is an extraordinary opportunity, and it isn't going to last forever.
Dodgson
Lewis Dodgson sat hunched in a dark corner of the Chesperito Cantina in Puerto Cortes, nursing a beer. Beside him, George Baselton, the Regis Professor of Biology at Stanford, was enthusiastically devouring a plate of huevos rancheros. The egg yolks ran yellow across green salsa. It made Dodgson sick just to look at it. He turned away, but he could still hear Baselton licking his lips, noisily.
There was no one else in the bar, except for some chickens clucking around the floor. Every so often, a young boy would come to the door, throw a handful of rocks at the chickens, and run away again, giggling. A scratchy stereo played an old Elvis Presley tape through corroded speakers above the bar. Dodgson hummed "Falling in Love With You," and tried to control his temper. He had been sitting in this dump for damn near an hour.
Baselton finished his eggs, and pushed the plate away. He brought out the small notebook he carried everywhere with him. "Now Lew," he said. "I've been thinking about how to handle this."
"Handle what?" Dodgson said irritably. "There's nothing to handle, unless we can get to that island." While he spoke, he tapped a small photograph of Richard Levine on the edge of the bar table. Turned it over. Looked at the image upside down. Then right side up.
He sighed. He looked at his watch.
"Lew," Baselton said patiently, "getting to the island is not the important part. The important part is how we present our discovery to the world."
Dodgson paused. "Our discovery," he repeated. "I like that, George. That's very good. Our discovery."
"Well, that's the truth, isn't it?" Baselton said, with a bland smile. "InGen is bankrupt, its technology lost to mankind. A tragic, tragic loss, as I have said many times on television. But under the circumstances, anyone who finds it again has made a discovery. I don't know what else you would call it. As Henri Poincare put it - "
"Okay," Dodgson said. "So we make a discovery. And then what? Hold a press conference?"
"Absolutely not," Baselton said, looking horrified. "A press conference would appear extremely crass. It would open us up to all sorts of criticism. No, no. A discovery of this magnitude must be treated with decorum. It must be reported, Lew."
"Reported?"
"In the literature: Nature, I imagine. Yes."
Dodgson squinted. "You want to announce this in an academic publication?"
"What better way to make it legitimate?" Baselton said. "It's entirely proper to present our findings to our scholarly peers. Of course it will start a debate - but what will that debate consist of? An academic squabble, professors sniping at professors, which will fill the science pages of the newspapers for three days, until it is pushed aside by the latest news on breast implants. And in those three days, we will have staked our claim."
"You'll write it?"
"Yes," Baselton said. "And later, I think, an article in American Scholar, or perhaps Natural History. A human-interest piece, what this discovery means for the future, what it tells us about the past, all that......"
Dodgson nodded. He could see that Baselton was correct, and he was reminded once again how much he needed him, and how wise he had been to add him to the team. Dodgson never thought about public reaction. And Baselton thought about nothing else.
"Well, that's fine," Dodgson said. "But none of it matters, unless we get to that island." He glanced at his watch again.
He heard a door open behind him, and Dodgson's assistant Howard King came in, pulling a heavyset Costa Rican man, with a mustache. The man had a weathered face and a sullen expression.
Dodgson turned on his stool. "Is this the guy?"
"Yes, Lew."
"What's his name?"
"Gandoca."
"Se?or Gandoca." Dodgson held up the photo of Levine. "You know this man?"
Gandoca hardly glanced at the photo. He nodded. "S��. Se?or Levine."
"That's right. Se?or flicking Levine. When was he here?"
"A few days ago. He left with Dieguito, my cousin. They are not back yet."
"And where did they go?" Dodgson asked.
"Isla Sorna."
"Good." Dodgson drained his beer, pushed the bottle away. "You have a boat?" He turned to King. "Does he have a boat?"
King said, "He's a fisherman. He has a boat."
Gandoca nodded. "A fishing boat. S��."
"Good. I want to go to Isla Sorna, too."
"Si, se?or, but today the weather - "
"I don't care about the weather," Dodgson said. "The weather will get better. I want to go now."
"Perhaps later - "
"Now."
Gandoca spread his hands. "I am very sorry, se?or - "
Dodgson said, "Show him the money, Howard."
King opened a briefcase. It was filled with five thousand colon notes. Gatidoca looked, picked up one of the bills, inspected it. He put it back carefully, shifted on his feet a little.
Dodgson said, "I want to go now."
"Si, se?or," Gandoca said. "We leave when you are ready."
"That's more like it," Dodgson said. "How long to get to the island?"
"Perhaps two hours, se?or."
"Fine," Dodgson said. "That'll be fine."
The High Hide
"Here we go!"
There was a click as Levine connected the flexible cable to the Explorer's power winch, and flicked it on. The cable turned slowly in the sunlight.
They had all moved down onto the broad grassy plain at the base of the cliff. The midday sun was high overhead, glaring off the rocky rim of the island. Below, the valley shimmered in midday heat.
There was a herd of hypsilophodons a short distance away; the green gazelle-like animals raised their heads occasionally above the grass to look toward them, every time they heard the clink of metal, as Eddie and the kids laid out the aluminum strut assembly which had been the subject of so much speculation back in California. That assembly now looked like a jumble of thin struts - an oversized version of pickup sticks - lying in the grass of the plain.
"Now we will see," Levine said, rubbing his hands together.
As the motor turned, the aluminum struts began to move, and slowly lifted into the air. The emerging structure appeared spidery and delicate, but Thorne knew that the cross-bracing would give it surprising strength. Struts unfolding, the structure rose ten feet, then fifteen feet, and finally it stopped. The little house at the top was now just beneath the lowest branches of the nearby trees, which almost concealed it from view. But the scaffolding itself gleamed bright and shiny in the sun.
"Is that it?" Arby said.
"That's it, yes." Thorne walked around the four sides, slipping in the locking pins, to hold it upright.
"But it's much too shiny," Levine said. "We should have made it matte black."
Thorne said, "Eddie, we need to hide this."
"Want to spray it, Doc? I think I brought some black paint."
Levine shook his head. "No, then it'll smell. How about those palms?
"Sure, we can do that." Eddie walked to a stand of nearby palms, and began to hack away big fronds with his machete.
Kelly stared up at the aluminum strut assembly. "It's great," she said. "But what is it?"
"It's a high hide," Levine said. "Come on." And he began to climb the scaffolding.
The structure at the top was a little house, its roof supported by aluminum bars spaced four feet apart. The floor of the house was also made of aluminum bars, but these were closer together, about six inches apart. Their feet threatened to slip through, so Levine took the first of the bundles of fronds that Eddie Carr was raising on a rope, and used them to make a more complete floor. The remaining fronds he tied to the outside of the house, concealing its structure.
Arby and Kelly stared out at the animals. From their vantage point, they could look across the whole valley. There was a distant herd of apatosaurs, on the other side of the river. A cluster of triceratops browsed to the north. Nearer the water, some duck-billed dinosaurs with long crests rising above their heads moved forward to drink. A low, trumpeting cry from the duckbills floated across the valley toward them: a deep, unearthly sound. A moment later, there was an answering cry, from the forest at the opposite side of the valley.
"What was that?" Kelly said.
"Parasaurolophus," Levine said. "It's trumpeting through its nuchal crest. Low-frequency sound carries a long distance."
To, the south, there was a herd of dark-green animals, with large curved protruding foreheads, and a rim of small knobby horns. They looked a little like buffalo. "What do you call those?" Kelly said.
"Good question," Levine said. "They are either Gravitholus albertae, or more likely Pachycephalosaurus wyomingensis. But it's difficult to say for sure, because a full skeleton for these animals has never been recovered. Their foreheads are very thick bone, so we've found many domed cranial fragments. But this is the first time I've ever seen the whole animal."
"And those heads? What are they for?" Arby said.
"Nobody knows," Levine said. "Everyone has assumed they're used for butting, for intraspecies fighting among males. Competition for females, that sort of thing."
Malcolm climbed up into the hide. "Yes, butting heads, he said sourly. "Just as you see them now."
"All right," Levine said, "so they're not butting heads at the moment. Perhaps their breeding season is concluded."
"Or perhaps they don't do it at all," Malcolm said, staring at the green animals. "They look pretty peaceful to me."
"Yes," Levine said," but of course that doesn't mean a thing. African buffalo appear peaceful most of the time too - in fact, they usually just stand motonless. Yet they're unpredictable and dangerous animals. We have to presume those domes exist for a reason - even if we're not seeing it now."
Levine turned to the kids. "That's why we made this structure. We want to make round-the-clock observations on the animals," he said. "To the extent possible, we want a full record of their activities."
"Why?" Arby said.
"Because," Malcolm said, "this island presents a unique opportunity to study the greatest mystery in the history of our planet: extinction."
"You see," Malcolm said, "when InGen shut down their facility, they did it hastily, and they left some live animals behind. That was five or six years ago. Dinosaurs mature rapidly; most species attain adulthood in four or five years. By now, the first generation of InGen dinosaurs - bred in a laboratory - has attained maturity, and has begun to breed a new generation, entirely in the wild. There is now a complete ecological system on this island, with a dozen or so dinosaur species living in social groups, for the first time in sixty-five million years."
Arby said, "So why is that an opportunity?"
Malcolm pointed across the plain. "Well, think about it. Extinction is a very difficult research topic. There are dozens of competing theories. The fossil record is incomplete. And you can't perform experiments. Galileo could climb the tower of Pisa and drop balls to test his theory of gravity. He never actually did it, but he could have. Newton used prisms to test his theory of light. Astronomers observed eclipses to test Einstein's theory of relativity. Testing occurs throughout science. But how can you test a theory of extinction? You can't."
Arby said, "But here..."
"Yes," Malcolm said. "What we have here is a population of extinct animals artificially introduced into a closed environment, and allowed to evolve all over again. There's never been anything like it in all history. We already know these animals became extinct once. But nobody knows why."
"And you expect to find out? In a few days?"
"Yes," Malcolm said. "We do."
"How? You don't expect them to become extinct again, do you?"
"You mean, right before our eyes?" Malcolm laughed. "No, no. Nothing like that. But the point is, for the first time we aren't just studying bones. We're seeing live animals, and observing their behavior. I have a theory, and I think that even in a short time, we will see evidence for that theory."
"What evidence?" Kelly said.
"What theory?" Arby said.
Malcolm smiled at them. "Wait," he said.
The Red Queen
The apatosaurs had come down to the river in the heat of the day; their graceful curving necks were reflected in the water as they bent to drink. Their long, whip-like tails swung back and forth lazily. Several younger apatosaurs, much smaller than the adults, scampered about in the center of the herd.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Levine said. "The way it all fits together. Just beautiful." He leaned over the side and shouted to Thorne, "Where's my mount?"
"Coming up," Thorne said.
The rope now brought up a heavy wide-based tripod, and a circular mount on top. There were five video cameras atop the mount, and dangling wires leading to solar panels. Levine and Malcolm began to set it up.
"What happens to the video?" Arby said.
"The data gets multiplexed, and we uplink it back to California. By satellite. We'll also hook into the security network. So we'll have lots of observation points."
"And we don't have to be here?"
Right."
"And this is what you call a high hide?"
"Yes. At least, that's what scientists like Sarah Harding call it."
Thorne climbed up to join them. The little shelter was now quite crowded, but Levine didn't seem to notice. He was entirely focused on the dinosaurs; he turned a pair of binoculars on the animals spread across the plain. "Just as we thought," he said to Malcolm. "Spatial oranization. Infants and juveniles in the center of the herd, protective adults on the periphery. The apatosaurs use their tails as defense,"
"That's the way it looks."
"Oh, there's no question about it," Levine said. He sighed. "It's so agreeable to be proven right."
On the ground below, Eddie unpacked the circular aluminum cage, the same one they had seen in California. It was six feet tall and four feet in diameter, constructed of one-inch titanium bars. "What do you want me to do with this?" Eddie said.
"Leave it down there," Levine said. "That's where it belongs."
Eddie set the cage upright in the corner of the scaffolding. Levine climbed down.
"And what's that for?" Arby said, looking down. "Catching a dinosaur?"
In point of fact, just the opposite." Levine clipped the cage to the side of the scaffolding. He swung the door open and shut, testing it. There was a lock in the door. He checked the lock, too, leaving the key in place, with its dangling elastic loop. "It's a predator cage, like a shark " Levine said, "If you're down here walking around and anything happens, you can climb in here, and you'll be safe."
"In case what happens?" Arby said, with a worried look.
"Actually, I don't think anything will happen," Levine said. "Because I doubt the animals will pay any attention to us, or to this little house, once the structure's been concealed."
"You mean they won't see it?"
"Oh, they'll see it," Levine said, "but they'll ignore it."
"But if they smell us..."
Levine shook his head. "We sited the hide so the prevailing wind is toward us. And you may have noticed these ferns have a distinct smell." It was a mild, slightly tangy odor, almost like eucalyptus.
Arby fretted. "But suppose they decide to eat the ferns?"
"They won't," Levine said. "These are Dicranopterus cyatheoides. They're mildly toxic and cause a rash in the month. In point of fact, there's a theory that their toxicity first evolved back in the Jurassic, as a defense against dinosaur browsers."
"That's not a theory," Malcolm said. "It's just idle speculation."
"There's some logic behind it," Levine said. "Plant life in the Mesozoic must have been severely challenged by the arrival of very large dinosaurs. Herds of giant herbivores, each animal consuming hundreds of pounds of plant matter each day, would have wiped out any plants that didn't evolve some defense - a bad taste, or nettles, or thorns, or chemical toxicity. So perhaps cyatheoides evolved its toxicity back then. And it's very effective, because contemporary animals don't eat these ferns, anywhere on earth. That's why they're so abundant. You may have noticed."
"Plants have defenses?" Kelly said.
"Of course they do. Plants evolve like every other form of life, and they've come up with their own forms of aggression, defense, and so on. In the nineteenth century, most theories concerned animals - nature red in tooth and claw, all that. But now scientists are thinking about nature green in root and stem. We realize that plants, in their ceaseless struggle to survive, have evolved everything from complex symbiosis with other animals, to signaling mechanisms to warn other plants, to outright chemical warfare."
Kelly frowned. "Signaling? Like what?"
"Oh, there are many examples," Levine said. "In Africa acacia trees evolved very long, sharp thorns - three inches or so - but that only provoked animals like giraffes and antelope to evolve long tongues to get past the thorns. Thorns alone didn't work. So in the evolutionary arms race, the acacia trees next evolved toxicity. They started to produce large quantities of tannin in their leaves, which sets off a lethal metabolic reaction in the animals that eat them. Literally kills them. At the same time, the acacias also evolved a kind of chemical warning system among themselves. If an antelope begins to eat one tree in a grove, that tree releases the chemical ethylene into the air, which causes other trees in the grove to step up the production of leaf tannin. Within five or ten minutes, the other trees are producing more tannin, making themselves poisonous.
"And then what happens to the antelope? It dies?"
"Well, not any more," Levine said, "because the evolutionary arms race continued, Eventually, antelopes learned that they could only browse for a short time. Once the trees started to produce more tannin, they had to stop eating it. And the browsers developed new strategies. For example, when a giraffe eats an acacia tree, it then avoids all the trees downwind. Instead, it moves on to another tree that is some distance away. So the animals have adapted to this defense, too."
"In evolutionary theory, this is called the Red Queen phenomenon," Malcolm said. "Because in Alice in Wonderland the Red Queen tells Alice she has to run as fast as she can just to stay where she is. That's the way evolutionary spirals seem. All the organisms are evolving at a furious pace just to stay in the same balance. To stay where they are."
Arby said, "And this is common? Even with plants?"
"Oh yes," Levine said. "In their own way, plants are extremely active. Oak trees, for example, produce tannin and phenol as a defense when caterpillars attack them. A whole grove of trees is alerted as soon as one tree is infested. It's a way to protect the entire grove - a kind of cooperation among trees, you might say."
Arby nodded, and looked out from the high hide at the apatosaurs, still by the river below. "So," Arby said, "is that why the dinosaurs haven't eaten all the trees off this island? Because those big apatosaurs must eat a lot of plants. They have long necks to eat the high leaves. But the trees hardly look touched."
"Very good," Levine said, nodding, "I noticed that myself."
"Is that because of these plant defenses?"
"Well, it might be," Levine said. "But I think there is a very simple explanation for why the trees are preserved."
"What's that?"
"Just look," Levine said. "It's right before your eyes."
Arby picked up the binoculars and stared at the herds. "What's the simple explanation?"
"Among paleontologists," Levine said, "there's been an interminable debate about why sauropods have long necks. Those animals you see have necks twenty feet long. The traditional belief has been that sauropods evolved long necks to eat high foliage that could not be, reached by smaller animals."
"So?" Arby said. "What's the debate?"
"Most animals on this planet have short necks," Levine said, "because a long neck is, well, a pain in the neck. It causes all sorts of problems. Structural problems: how to arrange muscles and ligaments to support a long neck. Behavioral problems: nerve impulses must travel a long way from the brain to the body. Swallowing problems: food has to go a long way from the mouth to the stomach. Breathing problems: air has to be pulled down a long windpipe. Cardiac problems: blood has to be pumped way up to the head, or the animal faints, In evolutionary terms, all this is very difficult to do."
"But giraffes do it," Arby said.
"Yes, they do. Although giraffe necks are nowhere near this long. Giraffes have evolved large hearts, and very thick fascia around the neck. In effect, the neck of a giraffe is like a blood-pressure cuff, going all the way up."
"Do dinosaurs have the same cuff?"
"We don't know. We assume apatosaurs have huge hearts, perhaps three hundred pounds or more. But there is another possible solution to the problem of pumping blood in a long neck."
"Yes?"
"You're looking at it right now," Levine said.
Arby clapped his hands. "They don't raise their necks!"
"Correct," Levine said. "At least, not very often, or for long periods. Of course, right now the animals are drinking, so their necks are down, but my guess is that if we watch them for an extended period we'll find they don't spend much time with their necks raised high."
"And that's why they don't eat the leaves on the trees!"
"Right."
Kelly frowned. "But if their long necks aren't used for eating, then why did they evolve them in the first place?"
Levine smiled. "There must be a good reason," he said. "I believe it has to do with defense."
"Defense? Long necks?" Arby stared. "I don't get it."
"Keep looking," Levine said. "It's really rather obvious."
Arbv peered through binoculars. He said to Kelly, "I hate it when he tells us it's obvious."
"I know," she said, with a sigh.
Arby glanced over at Thorne, and caught his eye. Thorne made a V with his fingers, and then pushed one finger, tilting it over. The movement forced the second finger to shift, too. So the two fingers were connected....
If it was a clue, he didn't get it. He didn't get it. He frowned.
Thorne mouthed: "Bridge."
Arby looked, and watched the whip-like tails swing back and forth over the younger animals. "I get it!" Arby said. "They use their tails for defense. And they need long necks to counterbalance the long tails. It's like a suspension bridge!"
Levine squinted at Arby. "You did that very fast," he said.