Майкл Крайтон – Jurassic Park / Парк Юрского периода (страница 7)
“I see.” Hammond cleared his throat, “And when did this, ah, specimen arrive in your hands?”
“Just today.”
On the speaker, Hammond coughed. “Ah, Dr. Grant. Have you told anybody about it yet?”
“No.”
“Good, that’s good. Well. Yes. I’ll tell you frankly, Dr. Grant, I’m having a little problem about this island. This EPA thing is coming at just the wrong time.”
“How’s that?” Grant said.
“Well, we’ve had our problems and some delays… Let’s just say that I’m under a little pressure here, and I’d like you to look at this island for me. I’ll be paying you the usual weekend consultant rate of twenty thousand a day. That’d be sixty thousand for three days. And if you can spare Dr. Sattler, she’ll go at the same rate. We need a botanist. What do you say?”
Ellie looked at Grant as he said, “Well, Mr. Hammond, that much money would fully finance our expeditions for the next two summers.”
“Good, good,” Hammond said politely. “Now, I’m sending the corporate jet to pick you up at that private airfield east of Choteau. It’s only about two hours’ drive from where you are. You be there at five p.m. tomorrow. Can you and Dr. Sattler make that plane?”
“I guess we can.”
“Good. Pack lightly. You don’t need passports. I’m looking forward to it. See you tomorrow,” Hammond said, and he hung up.
In the San Francisco law firm of Cowan, Swain and Ross Donald Gennaro listened on the phone and looked at his boss, Daniel Ross.
“I understand, John,” Gennaro said. “And Grant agreed to come? Good, that sounds fine to me. My congratulations, John.” He hung up the phone and turned to Ross.
“We can’t trust Hammond any more. He’s under too much pressure. The EPA’s investigating him, he’s behind schedule on his Costa Rican resort, and the investors are getting nervous. There have been too many rumors of problems down there. Too many workmen have died. And now this business about a living procompsit – whatever on the mainland…”
“What does that mean?” Ross said.
“Maybe nothing,” Gennaro said. “But we’ve got to inspect that island right away.”
“And what does Hammond say?”
“He insists nothing is wrong on the island. Claims he has all these security precautions.”
“But you don’t believe him,” Ross said.
“No,” Gennaro said. “I don’t.”
Donald Gennaro had come to Cowan, Swain and Ross as a specialist in investment banking. One of his first assignments, back in 1982, had been to accompany John Hammond while the old man, then nearly seventy, put together the funding to start the InGen corporation. They eventually raised almost a billion dollars.
“Hammond’s a dreamer,” Gennaro said.
“A potentially dangerous dreamer,” Ross said. “In any case, I agree that an inspection is overdue. What about your site experts?”
“I’m starting with experts Hammond already hired as consultants, early in the project.” Gennaro tossed a list onto Ross’s desk. “First group is a paleontologist, a paleobotanist, and a mathematician. They go down this weekend. I’ll go with them.”
“Will they tell you the truth?” Ross said.
“I think so. None of them had much to do with the island, and one of them – the mathematician, Ian Malcolm – was openly hostile to the project from the start. Insisted it would never work, could never work.”
“And who else?”
“Just a technical person: the computer system analyst. Review the park’s computers and fix some bugs. He should be there by Friday morning.”
“Fine,” Ross said. “You’re making the arrangements?”
“Hammond asked to place the calls himself. I think he wants to pretend that he’s not in trouble, that it’s just a social invitation. Showing off his island.”
“All right,” Ross said. “But just make sure it happens. Stay on top of it. I want this Costa Rican situation resolved within a week.” Ross got up, and walked out of the room.
“This just came,” Ellie said the next day, walking to the back of the trailer with a thick manila envelope. “It’s from Hammond.”
Grant noticed the blue-and-white InGen logo as he tore open the envelope. Inside was a thick book. As he flipped open the book, a sheet of paper fell out.
“I don’t get it,” Grant said. He flipped through the sheets. “These are architectural plans.” He turned to the top sheet:
VISITOR CENTER/LODGE
ISLA NUBLAR RESORT
The next page was a topographical map. It showed Isla Nublar as an inverted teardrop, bulging at the north, tapering at the south. The island was eight miles long, and the map divided it into several large sections.
The northern section was marked VISITOR AREA and it contained structures marked “Visitor Arrivals”, “Visitor Center/Administration”, “Power/Desalinization/Support”, “Hammond Res.”, and “Safari Lodge”. Grant could see the outline of a swimming pool, the rectangles of tennis courts, and the round signs that represented planting and shrubbery.
“Looks like a resort, all right,” Ellie said.
There followed detail sheets for the Safari Lodge itself: a long low building with a series of pyramid shapes on the roof. But there was little about the other buildings in the visitor area.
And the rest of the island was even more mysterious. As far as Grant could tell, it was mostly open space. A network of roads, tunnels, and outlying buildings, and a long thin lake, with concrete dams and barriers. But, for the most part, the island was divided into big curving areas with very little development at all. Each area was marked by codes.
“Is there an explanation for the codes?” she said.
Grant flipped the pages rapidly, but he couldn’t find one. He looked at the big curving divisions, separated from one another by the network of roads. There were only six divisions on the whole island. And each division was separated from the road by a concrete moat. Outside each moat was a fence with a little lightning sign alongside it. That mystified them until they were finally able to figure out that the fences were electrified.
“That’s odd,” she said. “Electrified fences at a resort?”
“Miles of them,” Grant said. “Electrified fences and moats, together. And usually with a road alongside them as well.”
“Just like a zoo,” Ellie said.
They went back to the topographical map and looked closely at the contour lines. The roads ran oddly. The main road ran north-south, right through the central hills of the island, one section of road was cut into the side of a cliff, above a river. And the roads were raised up above ground level, so you could see over the fences.
“You know,” Ellie said, “some of these dimensions are enormous. Look at this. This concrete moat is thirty feet wide. That’s like a military fortification.”
“So are these buildings,” Grant said. He had noticed that each open division had a few buildings, usually located in out-of-the-way corners. But the buildings were all concrete, with thick walls. In side-view elevations they looked like concrete bunkers with small windows. Like the Nazi pillboxes from old war movies.
At that moment, they heard a muffled explosion, and Grant put the papers aside. “Back to work,” he said.
“Fire!”
There was a slight vibration, and then yellow contour lines traced across the computer screen, and Alan Grant had a glimpse of the skeleton, beautifully defined, the long neck arched back. It was an infant velociraptor, and it looked perfect. Grant saw the complete skeleton, traced in bright yellow. It was indeed a young specimen. The outstanding characteristic of Velociraptor – the single-toed claw, which in a full-grown animal was a curved, six-inch-long weapon capable to rip open its prey, was in this infant no larger than the thorn on a rosebush. It was hardly visible at all on the screen. And Velociraptor was a lightly built dinosaur in any case, an animal as fine-boned as a bird, and presumably as intelligent.
“Doesn’t look very fearsome,” one of the technicians said.
“He wasn’t,” Grant said. “At least, not until he grew up.” Probably this baby had scavenged, feeding off carcasses killed by the adults, after the big animals had gorged themselves, and lay basking in the sun. Carnivores could eat as much as 25 percent of their body weight in a single meal, and it made them sleepy afterward. The babies would chitter and scramble over the bodies of the adults, and nip little bites from the dead animal. The babies were probably cute little animals.
But an adult velociraptor was another matter entirely. Pound for pound, a velociraptor was the most rapacious dinosaur that ever lived. Although relatively small – about two hundred pounds, the size of a leopard – velociraptors were quick, intelligent, and vicious, able to attack with sharp jaws, powerful clawed forearms, and the devastating single claw on the foot.
Velociraptors hunted in packs, and Grant thought it must have been a sight to see a dozen of these animals racing at full speed, leaping onto the back of a much larger dinosaur, tearing at the neck and slashing at the ribs and belly.