Prev Next

The Lost World

TheLostWorld

The Lost World

Michael Crichton

CENTURY

Published by Century Books in 1995

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Endpaper map copyright (c) David Cain 1995

Endpaper dinosaur illustrations (c) Gregory Wenzel 1995

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

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

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

First published in the United Kingdom by

Century Books

Random House UK Limited

20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London, SW1V 2SA

Random House, Australia (Pty) Limited

20 Alfred Street, Milsons Point, Sydney,

New South Wales 2061, Australia

Random House New Zealand Limited

18 Poland Road, Glenfield, Auckland 10, New Zealand

Random House South Africa (Pry) Limited

PO Box 337, Bergvlei, South Africa

Random House UK Limited Reg. No. 954009

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library

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

ISBN 0 7126 76902

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

Mackays of Chatham PLC, Chatham, Kent

To Carolyn Conger

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

ALBERT EINSTEIN

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

STUART KAUFFMAN

“Sequelae are inherently unpredictable.”

IAN MALCOLM

Introduction:

“Extinction at the K-T Boundary”

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

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

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

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

extinction?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then he smiled.

“But I have a few suggestions,” he said.

THE LOST WORLD

Prologue:

“Life at the Edge of Chaos”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No,” Levine said stubbornly. “I am speaking literally.”

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

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

The Lost World Hypothesis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Malcolm grunted. “I'd say.”

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

“No,” Malcolm said, giving her a glance.

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

Malcolm nodded. “You have time for lunch?”

“Sure, I would be - ”

“Dr. Malcolm! Wait up! Please! Dr. Malcolm!”

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

“Ah, shit,” Malcolm said.

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

“How could I?” Malcolm said. “It's absurd.”

“Yes, but - ”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Malcolm shrugged. “Anything is possible,” he said.

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

Malcolm paused. “Recently?”

“Not for a while.”

“Umm,” Malcolm said. “I thought so.”

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

“And? What happened to it?”

“The remains were burned.”

“So nothing is left?”

“That's right.”

“No photographs? No proof?”

“Apparently not.”

“So it's just a story,” Malcolm said.

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

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

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

“But that could cost - ”

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

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

“ My jumping days are over,” Malcolm said.

“But instead of taking me up on this, you - ”

“I'm not interested in dinosaurs,” Malcolm said.

“But everyone is interested in dinosaurs.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Malcolm stared at him. “And you believe that?”

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

“Did you ask Grant about it?”

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

Malcolm nodded slowly.

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

“No. I never met him.”

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

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

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

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

“The experts all tell me It's not.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Entirely untrue,” Malcolm said, nodding gravely. “Entirely untrue.”

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

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

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

There was nothing more to say.

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

“Why?” Malcolm said.

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

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

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

Malcolm listened, shaking his head.

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

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

“Never happen.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You sound hopeful.”

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

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

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

FIRST CONFIGURATION

"In the conservative region far from the chaotic edge,

individual elements coalesce slowly, showing no clear pattern."

IAN MALCOLM

Aberrant Forms

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

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

“Five minutes, Señior Guitierrez.”

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

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

“What is this place?”

“It's called Rojas.”

“So we're far south?”

“Yes. Only about fifty miles from the border with Panama.”

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

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

“When was that?”

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

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

Guitierrez said, “Been to Costa Rica before?”

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

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

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

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

“Where'd you come from?” Gtiitierrez asked him.

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

“Oh? What's there?”

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

“And?”

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

“You told him that?”

“Why not? It's the truth.”

“And the skeleton?”

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

“Stenonychosaurus?” Guitierrez said.

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

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

Levine said, “Circle it first, can we?”

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

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

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

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

“Public Health Service people came out earlier today.”

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

“I can't say,” Guitierrez said.

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

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

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

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

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

“What?”

“I am sorry, señor. No pictures arc allowed.”

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

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

“Marty, this is crazy.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It's important, Marty.”

“Sorry. I tried my best.”

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

“Marty. What do you think this animal is?”

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

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

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

“Marty. It's not a damn lizard.”

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

“I don't think so,” Levine said.

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

“Marty,” Levine said coldly. “I am never thrown off ”

“Well, of course, I didn't mean that - ”

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

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

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

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

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

“What is it?” Guiltierrez said.

“Give me your knife.”

“Why?” Guitierrez said.

“Just give it to me.”

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

“What?”

“Right along the posterior dermal line, there is a - ”

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

“What are they saying?” Levine asked, frowning.

Guitierrez sighed. “They're saying to get back.”

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

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

Prev Next