“No.”
“How many animals in total do you think are here?”
He shrugged. “A couple of hundred. Maybe five hundred at most.”
“So you’re off by an order of magnitude, Ian. Hold this, and I’ll get the lamp.”
She swung the heat lamp over the baby, to harden the resin. She adjusted the oxygen mask over the baby’s snout.
“The island can’t support all those predators,” she said. “And yet they’re here.”
He said, “What could explain it?”
She shook her head. “There has to be a food source that we don’t know about.”
“You mean, an artificial source?” he said. “I don’t think there is one.”
“No,” she said. “Artificial food sources make animals tame. And these animals aren’t tame. The only other possibility I can think of is that there’s a differential death rate among prey. If they grow very fast, or die young, then that might represent a larger food supply than expected.”
Malcolm said, “I’ve noticed, the largest animals seem small. It’s as if they don’t seem to reach maturity. Maybe they’re being killed off early.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But if there’s a differential death rate large enough to support this population, you should see evidence of carcasses, and lots of skeletons of dead animals. Have you seen that?”
Malcolm shook his head. “No. In fact, now that you mention it, I haven’t seen any skeletons at all.”
“Me neither.” She pushed the light away. “There’s something funny about this island, Ian.”
“I know,” Malcolm said.
“You do?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’ve suspected it from the beginning.”
Thunder rumbled. From the high hide, the plain below them was dark and silent, except for the distant snarling of the raptors. “Maybe we should go back,” Eddie said anxiously.
“Why?” Levine said. Levine had switched to his night-vision glasses, pleased with himself that he had thought to bring them. Through the goggles, the world was shades of pale green. He clearly saw the raptors at the kill site, the tall grass trampled and bloody all around. The carcass was long since finished, though they could still hear the cracking of bones as the animals gnawed on them.
“I just think,” Eddie said, “that now that it’s night, we’d be safer in the trailer.”
“Why?” Levine said.
“Well, it’s reinforced, it’s strong, and very safe. It has everything that we need. I just think we should be there. I mean, you’re not planning on staying out here all night, are you?”
“No,” Levine said. “What do you think I am, a fanatic?”
Eddie grunted.
“But let’s stay for a while longer,” Levine said.
Eddie turned to Thorne. “Doc? What do you say? It’s going to start raining soon.”
“Just a little longer,” Thorne said. “And then we’ll all go back together.”
“There have been dinosaurs on this island for five years, maybe more,” Malcolm said, “but none have appeared elsewhere. Suddenly, in the last year, carcasses of dead animals are showing up on the beaches of Costa Rica, and according to reports, on islands of the Pacific as well.”
“Carried by currents?”
“Presumably. But the question is, why now? Why all of a sudden, after five years? Something has changed, but we don’t know—wait a minute.” He moved away from the table, over to the computer console. He turned toward the screen.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“Arby got us into the old network,” he said, “and it still has research files from the eighties.” He moved the mouse across the screen. “We haven’t looked at them. . . .” He saw the menu come up, showing work files and research files. He began to scroll through screens of text.
“Years ago, they had trouble with some disease,” he said. “There were a lot of notes about it in the laboratory.”
“What kind of disease?”
“They didn’t know,” Malcolm said.
“In the wild, there are some very slow-acting illnesses,” she said. “May take five or ten years to show up. Caused by viruses, or prions. You know, protein fragments—like scrapie or mad-cow disease.”
“But,” Malcolm said, “those diseases only come from eating contaminated food.”
There was a silence.
“What do you suppose they fed them, back then?” she asked. “Because if I was growing baby dinosaurs, I’d wonder. What do they eat? Milk, I suppose, but—”
“Milk, yes,” Malcolm said, reading the screens. “First six weeks, goat’s milk.”
“That’s the logical choice,” she said. “Goat’s milk is what they always use in zoos, because it’s so hypoallergenic. But what about later?”
“Give me a minute here,” Malcolm said.
Harding held the baby’s leg in her hand, waiting for the resin to harden. She looked at the cast, sniffed it. It was still strong-smelling. “I hope that’s all right,” she said. “Sometimes if there’s a distinctive smell, the animals won’t allow infants to return. But maybe this will dissipate after the compound hardens. How long has it been?”
Malcolm glanced at his watch. “Ten minutes. Another ten minutes and it’ll set.”
She said, “I’d like to take this guy back to the nest.”
Thunder rumbled. They looked out the window at the black night.
“Probably too late to return him tonight,” Malcolm said. He was still typing, peering at the screen.
“So . . . what did they feed them? Okay. In the period from 1988 to 1989 . . . the herbivores got a macerated plant matter on a feeding schedule three times a day . . . and the carnivores got . . .”
He stopped.
“What’d the carnivores get?”
“Looks like a ground-up extract of animal protein. . . .”
“From what? The usual source is turkey or chicken, with some antibiotics added.”
“Sarah,” he said. “They used sheep extract.”
“No,” she said. “They wouldn’t do that.”
“Yeah, they did. Came from their supplier, who used ground-up sheep.”
“You’re kidding,” she said.
Malcolm said, “I’m afraid so. Now, let me see if I can find out—”
A soft alarm sounded. On the wall panel above him, a red light began to flash. A moment later, the exterior lights above the trailer turned on, bathing the grassy clearing around them in bright halogen glare.
“What’s that?” Harding said.
“The sensors—something set them off.” Malcolm moved away from the computer, peered out the window. He saw nothing but tall grass, and the dark trees at the perimeter. It was silent, still.
Sarah, still intent on the baby, said, “What happened?”
“I don’t know. I don’t see anything.”
“But something triggered the sensors?”
“I guess.”
“Wind?”
“There’s no wind,” he said.
In the high hide, Kelly said, “Hey, look!”
Thorne turned. From their location in the valley, they could look north to the high cliff behind them and the two trailers above, in the grassy clearing.
The exterior lights on the trailers had come on.
Thorne unclipped the radio at his belt. “Ian? Are you there?”
A momentary crackle: “I’m here, Doc.”
“What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” Malcolm said. “The perimeter lights just turned on. I think the sensor was activated. But we don’t see anything out there.”
Eddie said, “Air’s cooling off fast now. Might have been convection currents, set it off.”
Thorne said, “Ian? Everything okay?”
“Yes. Fine. Don’t worry.”
Eddie said, “I always figured we set the sensitivity too high. That’s all it is.”
Levine frowned, and said nothing.
&
nbsp; Sarah finished with the baby, and wrapped him in a blanket, and gently strapped him down to the table with cloth restraint straps. She came over and stood beside Malcolm. She looked out the window.
“What do you think?”
Malcolm shrugged. “Eddie says the system’s too sensitive.”
“Is it?”
“I don’t know. It’s never been tested before.” He scanned the trees at the edge of the clearing, looking for any movement. Then he thought he heard a snorting sound, almost a growl. It seemed like it was answered from somewhere behind him. He went to look out the other side of the trailer, at the trees on the other side.
Malcolm and Harding looked out, straining to see something in the night. Malcolm held his breath, tensely. After a moment, Harding sighed. “I don’t see anything, Ian.”
“No. Me neither.”
“Must be a false alarm.”
Then he felt the vibration, a deep resonant thumping in the ground, that was carried to them through the floor of the trailer. He glanced at Sarah. Her eyes widened.
Malcolm knew what it was. The vibration came again, unmistakably this time.
Sarah stared out the window. She whispered, “Ian: I see it.”