Майкл Крайтон – Jurassic Park / Парк Юрского периода (страница 3)
“I am not an expert. I’ve asked for Dr. Guitierrez to visit us here. He is a senior researcher at the Reserva Bioldgica de Carara, which is across the bay. Perhaps he can identify the animal for us.”
Dr. Guitierrez was a bearded man wearing khaki shorts and shirt. He explained that he was a field biologist from Yale who had worked in Costa Rica for the last five years. Marty Guitierrez examined Tina thoroughly, then measured the bites with a small pocket ruler and asked several questions about the saliva. Finally he turned to Mike Bowman and his wife. “I think Tina’s going to be fine. I just want to be clear about a few details,” he said, making notes. “Your daughter says she was bitten by a green lizard, approximately one foot high, which walked upright onto the beach from the mangrove swamp?”
“That’s right, yes.”
“And the lizard made some kind of a vocalization?”
“Tina said it chirped, or squeaked.”
“Like a mouse, would you say?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then,” Dr. Guitierrez said, “I know this lizard.” He explained that, of the six thousand species of lizards in the world, no more than a dozen species walked upright. Of those species, only four were found in Latin America. And judging by the coloration, the lizard could be only one of the four. “I am sure this lizard was a striped basilisk lizard[2], found here in Costa Rica and also in Honduras. Standing on their hind legs, they are sometimes as tall as a foot.”
“Are they poisonous?”
“No, Mrs. Bowman. Not at all.” Guitierrez explained that the swelling in Tina’s arm was an allergic reaction. “According to the literature, fourteen percent of people are strongly allergic to reptiles,” he said, “and your daughter must be one of them.”
“She was screaming, she said it was so painful.”
“Probably it was,” Guitierrez said. “Reptile saliva contains serotonin, which causes tremendous pain.” He turned to Cruz. “Her blood pressure came down with antihistamines?”
“Yes,” Cruz said. “Promptly.”
“Serotonin,” Guitierrez said. “No question.”
Still, Ellen Bowman remained uneasy. “But why would a lizard bite her in the first place?”
“Lizard bites are very common,” Guitierrez said. “Animal handlers in zoos get bitten all the time. And just the other day I heard that a lizard had bitten an infant in her crib in Amaloya, about sixty miles from where you were. So bites do occur. I’m not sure why your daughter had so many bites. What was she doing at the time?”
“Nothing. She said she was sitting pretty still, because she didn’t want to frighten it away.”
“Sitting pretty still,” Guitierrez said, frowning. He shook his head. “Well. I don’t think we can say exactly what happened. Wild animals are unpredictable.”
Mike Bowman then showed Guitierrez the picture that Tina had drawn. Guitierrez nodded. “I would accept this as a picture of a basillsk lizard,” he said. “A few details are wrong, of course. The neck is much too long, and she has drawn the hind legs with only three toes instead of five. The tail is too thick, and raised too high. But otherwise this is the lizard.”
A day later Tina was released from the hospital. “Go on. Say thank you to Dr. Cruz,” Ellen Bowman said, and pushed Tina forward.
“Thank you, Dr. Cruz,” Tina said. “I feel much better now.”
Dr. Cruz smiled and shook the little girl’s hand gravely. “Enjoy the rest of your holiday in Costa Rica, Tina.”
“I will.”
The Bowman family had started to leave when Dr. Cruz said, “Oh, Tina, do you remember the lizard that bit you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You remember its feet?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Did it have any toes?”
“Yes.”
“How many toes did it have?”
“Three,” she said.
“How do you know that?”
“Because I looked,” she said. “Anyway, all the birds on the beach made marks in the sand with three toes, like this.” She held up her hand, middle three fingers spread wide. “And the lizard made those kind of marks in the sand, too.”
“The lizard made marks like a bird?”
“Uh-huh,” Tina said. “He walked like a bird, too. He jerked his head like this, up and down.” She took a few steps, bobbing her head.
After the Bowmans had departed, Dr. Cruz decided to report this conversation to Guitierrez, at the biological station.
“I must admit the girl’s story is puzzling,” Guitierrez said. “I have been doing some checking myself. I am no longer certain she was bitten by a basilisk. Not certain at all.”
“Then what could it be?”
“Well,” Guitierrez said, “let’s not speculate prematurely. By the way, have you heard of any other lizard bites at the hospital?”
“No, why?”
“Let me know, my friend, if you do.”
The next day Marty Guitierrez found the remains of a lizard sat on the beach of Cabo Blanco, near the spot where the American girl had been, two days before. Guitierrez decided to send it to the United States for final positive identification. The acknowledged expert was Edward H. Simpson, emeritus professor of zoology at Columbia University, in New York. Probably, Marty thought, he would send his lizard to Dr. Simpson.
Dr. Richard Stone, head of the Tropical Diseases Laboratory of Columbia University was unprepared for what he received that morning.
The white plastic cylinder was the size of a half-gallon milk container, it had locking metal latches and a screw top. Inside he found a plastic sandwich bag, containing something green. Stone spread a surgical drape on the table and shook out the contents of the bag. A piece of frozen flesh struck the table with a dull thud.
“Huh,” the technician said. “Looks eaten.”
“Yes, it does,” Stone said. “What do they want with us?”
The technician consulted the enclosed documents. “Lizard is biting local children. They have a question about identification of the species, and a concern about diseases transmitted from the bite.” She produced a child’s picture of a lizard, signed TINA at the top. “One of the kids drew a picture of the lizard.”
Stone glanced at the picture. “Obviously we can’t verify the species,” Stone said. “But we can check diseases easily enough, if we can get any blood out of this fragment. What are they calling this animal?”
“ ‘Basiliscus amoratus with three-toed genetic anomaly,’ ” she said, reading.
“Okay,” Stone said. “Let’s get started. Do an X-ray and take Polaroids for the record. Once we have blood, start running antibody sets until we get some matches.”
Before lunchtime, the lab had its answer: the lizard blood showed no significant reactivity to any viral or bacterial antigen. They had run toxicity profiles as well, and they had found only one positive match: the blood was mildly reactive to the venom of the Indian king cobra. They faxed the answer to Dr. Martin Guitierrez that same evening.
Martin Guitierrez read the fax from the Columbia Medical Center/Tropical Diseases Laboratory.
Guitierrez made two assumptions. First, that his identification of the lizard as a basilisk had been confirmed by scientists at Columbia University. And second, that the absence of communicable disease meant the recent episodes of sporadic lizard bites implied no serious health hazards for Costa Rica.
It was nearly midnight in the clinic in Bahia Anasco when the midwife Elena Morales heard a squeaking, chirping sound. Thinking that it was a rat, she quickly put a compress on the forehead of the mother and went into the next room to check on the newborn baby. As her hand touched the doorknob, she heard the chirping again, and she relaxed. Evidently it was just a bird. Costa Ricans said that when a bird came to visit a newborn child, it brought good luck.
Elena opened the door. The infant lay in a wicker bassinet, wrapped in a light blanket, only its face exposed. Around the rim of the bassinet, three dark-green lizards crouched like gargoyles. When they saw Elena, they cocked their heads and stared curiously at her, but did not flee. In the light of her flashlight Elena saw that blood dripped from their snouts. Softly chirping, one lizard bent down and, with a quick shake of its head, tore a ragged chunk of flesh from the baby.
Elena rushed forward, screaming, and the lizards fled into the darkness. But long before she reached the bassinet, she could see what had happened to the infant’s face, and she knew the child must be dead. The lizards scattered into the rainy night, chirping and squealing, leaving behind only bloody three-toed tracks, like birds.
Elena Morales decided not to report the lizard attack: she left the baby alone in the room. So she reported the death as SIDS: sudden infant death syndrome. This was a syndrome of unexplained death among very young children.
The university lab in San Jose that analyzed the saliva sample from Tina Bowman’s arm made several remarkable discoveries. There was, as expected, a great deal of serotonin. But among the salivary proteins was a real monster, one of the largest proteins known. Biological activity was still under study, but it seemed to be a neurotoxic poison related to cobra venom, although more primitive in structure.
The lab also detected trace quantities of the enzyme that was a marker for genetic engineering, and not found in wild animals, technicians assumed it was a lab contaminant and did not report it when they called Dr. Cruz, the physician in Puntarenas.