Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park #1)

Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park #1) Page 7

    Someone was running up to the helicopter. A man with a baseball cap and red hair. He threw open the door and said cheerfully, "Hi, I'm Ed Regis. Welcome to Isla Nublar, everybody. And watch your step, please."

    A narrow path wound down the hill. The air was chilly and damp. As they moved lower, the mist around them thinned, and Grant could see the landscape better. It looked, he thought, rather like the Pacific Northwest, the Olympic Peninsula.

    "That's right," Regis said. "Primary ecology is deciduous rain forest. Rather different from the vegetation on the mainland, which is more classical rain forest. But this is a microclimate that only occurs at elevation, on the slopes of the northern hills. The majority of the island is tropical."

    Down below, they could see the white roofs of large buildings, nestled among the planting. Grant was surprised: the construction was elaborate. They moved lower, out of the mist, and now he could see the full extent of the island, stretching away to the south. As Regis had said, it was mostly covered in tropical forest.

    To the south, rising above the palm trees, Grant saw a single trunk with no leaves at all, just a big curving stump. Then the stump moved, and twisted around to face the new arrivals. Grant realized that he was not seeing a tree at all.

    He was looking at the graceful, curving neck of an enormous creature, rising fifty feet into the air.

    He was looking at a dinosaur.

    Welcome

    "My God," Ellie said softly. They were all staring at the animal above the trees. "My God."

    Her first thought was that the dinosaur was extraordinarily beautiful. Books portrayed them as oversize, dumpy creatures, but this long-necked animal had a gracefulness, almost a dignity, about its movements. And it was quick-there was nothing lumbering or dull in its behavior. The sauropod peered alertly at them, and made a low trumpeting sound, rather like an elephant. A moment later, a second head rose above the foliage, and then a third, and a fourth.

    "My God," Ellie said again.

    Gennaro was speechless. He had known all along what to expect-he had known about it for years-but he had somehow never believed it would happen, and now, he was shocked into silence. The awesome power of the new genetic technology, which he had formerly considered to he just so many words in an overwrought sales pitch-the power suddenly became clear to him. These animals were so big! They were enormous! Big as a house! And so many of them! Actual damned dinosaurs! Just as real as you could want.

    Gennaro thought: We are going to make a fortune on this place. A fortune.

    He hoped to God the island was safe.

    Grant stood on the path on the side of the hill, with the mist on his face, staring at the gray necks craning above the palms. He felt dizzy, as if the ground were sloping away too steeply. He had trouble getting his breath. Because he was looking at something he had never expected to see in his life. Yet he was seeing it.

    The animals in the mist were perfect apatosaurs, medium-size sauropods. His stunned mind made academic associations: North American herbivores, late Jurassic horizon. Commonly called "brontosaurs." First discovered by E. D. Cope in Montana in 1876. Specimens associated with Morrison formation strata in Colorado, Utah, and Oklahoma. Recently Berman and McIntosh had reclassified it a diplodocus based on skull appearance, Traditionally, Brontosaurus was thought to spend most of its time in shallow water, which would help support its large bulk. Although this animal was clearly not in the water, it was moving much too quickly, the head and neck shifting above the palms in a very active manner-a surprisingly active manner-

    Grant began to laugh.

    "What is it?" Hammond said, worried. "Is something wrong?"

    Grant just shook his head, and continued to laugh. He couldn't tell them that what was funny was that he had seen the animal for only a few seconds, but he had already begun to accept it-and to use his observations to answer long-standing questions in the field.

    He was still laughing as he saw a fifth and a sixth neck crane up above the palm trees. The sauropods watched the people arrive. They reminded Grant of oversize giraffes-they had the same pleasant, rather stupid gaze.

    "I take it they're not animatronic," Malcolm said. "They're very lifelike."

    "Yes, they certainly are," Hammond said. "Well, they should be, shouldn't they?"

    From the distance, they heard the trumpeting sound again. First one animal made it, and then the others joined in.

    "That's their call," Ed Regis said. "Welcoming us to the island."

    Grant stood and listened for a moment, entranced.

    "You probably want to know what happens next," Hammond was saying, continuing down the path. "We've scheduled a complete tour of the facilities for you, and a trip to see the dinosaurs in the park later this afternoon. I'll be joining you for dinner, and will answer any remaining questions you may have then. Now, if you'll go with Mr. Regis . . ."

    The group followed Ed Regis toward the nearest buildings. Over the path, a crude band-painted sign read: "Welcome to Jurassic Park."

    THIRD ITERATION

    [picture]

    "Details emerge more clearly as the fractal curve is redrawn."

    IAN MALCOM

    Jurassic Park

    They moved into a green tunnel of overarching palms leading toward the main visitor building. Everywhere, extensive and elaborate planting emphasized the feeling that they were entering a new world, a prehistoric tropical world, and leaving the normal world behind.

    Ellie said to Grant, "They look pretty good."

    "Yes," Grant said. "I want to see them up close. I want to lift up their toe pads and inspect their claws and feel their skin and open their laws and have a look at their teeth. Until then I don't know for sure. But yes, they look good. "

    "I suppose it changes your field a bit," Malcolm said.

    Grant shook his head. "It changes everything," he said.

    For 150 years, ever since the discovery of gigantic animal bones in Europe, the study of dinosaurs had been an exercise in scientific deduction. Paleontology was essentially detective work, searching for clues in the fossil bones and the trackways of the long-vanished giants. The best paleontologists were the ones who could make the most clever deductions.

    And all the great disputes of paleontology were carried out in this fashion-including the bitter debate, in which Grant was a key figure, about whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded.

    Scientists had always classified dinosaurs as reptiles, cold-blooded creatures drawing the heat they needed for life from the environment. A mammal could metabolize food to produce bodily warmth, but a reptile could not. Eventually a handful of researchers-led chiefly by John Ostrom and Robert Bakker at Yale-began to suspect that the concept of sluggish, cold-blooded dinosaurs was inadequate to explain the fossil record. In classic deductive fashion, they drew conclusions from several lines of evidence.

    First was posture: lizards and reptiles were bent-legged sprawlers, hugging the ground for warmth. Lizards didn't have the energy to stand on their hind legs for more than a few seconds. But the dinosaurs stood on straight legs, and many walked erect on their hind legs. Among living animals, erect posture occurred only in warm-blooded mammals and birds. Thus dinosaur posture suggested warm-bloodedness.

    Next they studied metabolism, calculating the pressure necessary to push blood up the eigbteen-foot-long neck of a brachlosaur, and concluding that it could only be accomplished by a four-chambered, hot-blooded heart.

    They studied trackways, fossil footprints left in mud, and concluded that dinosaurs ran as fast as a man; such activity implied warm blood. They found dinosaur remains above the Arctic Circle, in a frigid environment unimaginable for a reptile. And the new studies of group behavior, based largely on Grant's own work, suggested that dinosaurs had a complex social life and reared their young, as reptiles did not. Crocodiles and turtles abandon their eggs. But dinosaurs probably did not.

    The warm-blooded controversy had raged for fifteen years, before a new perception of dinosaurs as quick-moving, active animals was acecpted-but not without lasting animosities. At conventions, there were still colleagues who did not speak to one another.

    But now, if dinosaurs could be cloned-why, Grant's field of study was going to change instantly. The paleontological study of dinosaurs was finished. The whole enterprise-the museum balls with their giant skeletons and flocks of echoing schoolchildren, the university laboratories with their bone trays, the research papers, the journals-all of it was going to end.

    "You don't seem upset," Malcolm said.

    Grant shook his head. "It's been discussed, in the field. Many people imagined it was coming. But not so soon."

    "Story of our species," Malcolm said, laughing. "Everybody knows it's coming, but not so soon."

    As they walked down the path, they could no longer see the dinosaurs, but they could hear them, trumpeting softly in the distance.

    Grant said, "My only question is, where'd they get the DNA?"

    Grant was aware of serious speculation in laboratories in Berkeley, Tokyo, and London that it might eventually be possible to clone an extinct animal such as a dinosaur-if you could get some dinosaur DNA to work with. The problem was that all known dinosaurs were fossils, and the fossilization destroyed most DNA, replacing it with inorganic material. Of course, if a dinosaur was frozen, or preserved in a peat bog, or mummified in a desert environment, then its DNA might be recoverable.

    But nobody had ever found a frozen or mummified dinosaur. So cloning was therefore impossible. There was nothing to clone from. All the modern genetic technology was useless, It was like having a Xerox copier but nothing to copy with it.

    Ellie said, "You can't reproduce a real dinosaur, because you can't get real dinosaur DNA."

    "Unless there's a way we haven't thought of," Grant said. "Like what?" she said.

    "I don't know," Grant said.

    Beyond a fence, they came to the swimming pool, which spilled over into a series of waterfalls and smaller rocky pools. The area was planted with huge ferns. "Isn't this extraordinary?" Ed Regis said. "Especially on a misty day, these plants really contribute to the prehistoric atmosphere. These are authentic Jurassic ferns, of course."

    Ellie paused to look more closely at the ferns. Yes, it was just as he said: Serenna veriformans, a plant found abundantly in fossils more than two hundred million years old, now common only in the wetlands of Brazil and Colombia. But whoever had decided to place this particular fern at poolside obviously didn't know that the spores of veriformans contained a deadly beta-carboline alkaloid. Even touching the attractive green fronds could make you sick, and if a child were to take a mouthful, he would almost certainly die-the toxin was fifty times more poisonous than oleander.

    People were so naive about plants, Ellie thought. They just chose plants for appearance, as they would choose a picture for the wall. It never occurred to them that plants were actually living things, busily performing all the living functions of respiration, ingestion, excretion, reproduction-and defense.

    But Ellie knew that, in the earth's history, plants had evolved as competitively as animals, and in some ways more fiercely. The poison in Serenna veriformans was a minor example of the elaborate chemical arsenal of weapons that plants had evolved. There were terpenes, which plants spread to poison the soil around them and inhibit competitors; alkaloids, which made them unpalatable to insects and predators (and children); and pheromones, used for communication. When a Douglas fir tree was attacked by beetles, it produced an anti-feedant chemical-and so did other Douglas firs in distant parts of the forest. It happened in response to a warning alleochemical secreted by the trees that were under attack.

    People who imagined that life on earth consisted of animals moving against a green background seriously misunderstood what they were seeing. That green background was busily alive. Plants grew, moved, twisted, and turned, fighting for the sun; and they interacted continuously with ammals-discouraging some with bark and thorns; poisoning others, and feeding still others to advance their own reproduction, to spread their pollen and seeds. It was a complex, dynamic process which she never ceased to find fascinating. And which she knew most people simply didn't understand.

    But if planting deadly ferns at poolside was any indication, then it was clear that the designers of Jurassic Park had not been as careful as they should have been.

    "Isn't it just wonderful?" Ed Regis was saying. "If you look up ahead, you'll see our Safari Lodge." Ellie saw a dramatic, low building, with a series of glass pyramids on the roof. "That's where you'll all be staying here in Jurassic Park."

    Grant's suite was done in beige tones, the rattan furniture in green jungle-print motifs. The room wasn't quite finished; there were stacks of lumber in the closet, and pieces of electrical conduit on the floor. There was a television set in the corner, with a card on top:

            Channel 2: Hypsilophodont Highlands

    Channel 3: Triceratops Territory

    Channel 4: Sauropod Swamp

    Channel 5: Carnivore Country

    Channel 6: Stegosaurus South

    Channel 7: Velociraptor Valley

    Channel 8: Pterosaur Peak

    He found the names irritatingly cute. Grant turned on the television but got only static. He shut it off and went into his bedroom, tossed his suitcase on the bed. Directly over the bed was a large pyramidal skylight. It created a tented feeling, like sleeping under the stars. Unfortunately the glass had to be protected by heavy bars, so that striped shadows fell across the bed.

    Grant paused. He had seen the plans for the lodge, and be didn't remember bars on the skylight. In fact, these bars appeared to be a rather crude addition. A black steel frame had been constructed outside the glass walls, and the bars welded to the frame.

    Puzzled, Grant moved from the bedroom to the living room. His window looked out on the swimming pool.

    "By the way, those ferns are poison," Ellie said, walking into his room. "But did you notice anything about the rooms, Alan?"

    "They changed the plans."

    "I think so, yes." She moved around the room. "The windows are small," she said. "And the glass is tempered, set in a steel frame. The doors are steel-clad. That shouldn't be necessary. And did you see the fence when we came in?"

    Grant nodded. The entire lodge was enclosed within a fence, with bars of incb-thick steel. The fence was gracefully landscaped and painted flat black to resemble wrought iron, but no cosmetic effort could disguise the thickness of the metal, or its twelve-foot height.

    "I don't think the fence was in the plans, either," Ellie said. "It looks to me like they've turned this place into a fortress."

    Grant looked at his watch. "We'll be sure to ask why," he said. "The tour starts in twenty minutes."

    When Dinosaurs ruled the Earth

    They met in the visitor building: two stories high, and all glass with exposed black anodized girders and supports. Grant found it determinedly high-tech.

    There was a small auditorium dominated by a robot Tyrannosaurus rex, poised menacingly by the entrance to an exhibit area labeled WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH. Farther on were other displays: WHAT IS A DINOSAUR? and THE MESOZOIC WORLD. But the exhibits weren't completed; there were wires and cables all over the floor. Gennaro climbed up on the stage and talked to Grant, Ellie, and Malcolm, his voice echoing slightly in the room.

    Hammond sat in the back, his hands folded across his chest.

    "We're about to tour the facilities," Gennaro said. "I'm sure Mr. Hammond and his staff will show everything in the best light. Before we go, I wanted to review why we are here, and what I need to decide before we leave. Basically, as you all realize by now, this is an island in which genetically engineered dinosaurs have been allowed to move in a natural park-like setting, forming a tourist attraction. The attraction isn't open to tourists yet, but it will be in a year.

    "Now, my question for you is a simple one. Is this island safe? Is it safe for visitors, and is it safely containing the dinosaurs?"

    Gennaro turned down the room lights. "There are two pieces of evidence which we have to deal with. First of all, there is Dr. Grant's identification of a previously unknown dinosaur on the Costa Rican mainland. This dinosaur is known only from a partial fragment. It was found in July of this year, after it supposedly bit an American girl on a beach. Dr. Grant can tell you more later. I've asked for the original fragment, which is in a lab in New York, to be flown here so that we can inspect it directly. Meanwhile, there is a second piece of evidence.

    "Costa Rica has an excellent medical service, and it tracks all kinds of data. Beginning in March, there were reports of lizards biting infants in their cribs-and also, I might add, biting old people who were sleeping soundly. These lizard bites were sporadically reported in coastal villages from Ismaloya to Puntarenas. After March, lizard bites were no longer reported. However, I have this graph from the Public Health Service in San Jos6 of infant mortality in the towns of the west coast earlier this year."

    [picture]

    "I direct your attention to two features of this graph," Gennaro said. "First, infant mortality is low in the months of January and February, then spikes in March, then it's low again in April. But from May onward, it is high, right through July, the month the American girl was bitten. The Public Health Service feels that something is now affecting infant mortality, and it is not being reported by the workers in the coastal villages. The second feature is the puzzling biweekly spiking, which seems to suggest some kind of alternating phenomenon is at work."

    The lights came back on. "All right," Gennaro said. "That's the evidence I want explained. Now, are there any-"

    "We can save ourselves a great deal of trouble," Malcolm said. "I'll explain it for you now."

    "You will?" Gennaro said.

    "Yes," Malcolm said. "First of all, animals have very likely gotten off the island."

    "Oh balls," Hammond growled, from the back.

    "And second, the graph from the Public Health Service is almost certainly unrelated to any animals that have escaped."

    Grant said, "How do you know that?"

    "You'll notice that the graph alternates between high and low spikes," Malcolm said. "That is characteristic of many complex systems. For example, water dripping from a tap. If you turn on the faucet lust a little, you'll get a constant drip, drip, drip. But if you open it a little more, so that there's a bit of turbulence in the flow, then you'll get alternating large and small drops. Drip drip . . . Drip drip . . . Like that. You can try it yourself. Turbulence produces alternation-it's a signature. And you will get an alternating graph like this for the spread of any new illness in a community,"

    "But why do you say it isn't caused by escaped dinosaurs?" Grant said.

    "Because it is a nonlinear signature," Malcolm said. "You'd need hundreds of escaped dinosaurs to cause it. And I don't think hundreds of dinosaurs have escaped. So I conclude that some other phenomenon, such as a new variety of flu, is causing the fluctuations you see in the graph."

    Gennaro said, "But you think that dinosaurs have escaped?"

    " Probably, yes."

    "Why?"

    "Because of what you are attempting here. Look, this island is an attempt to re-create a natural environment from the past. To make an isolated world where extinct creatures roam freely.  Correct?"

    "Yes."

    "But from my point of view, such an undertaking is impossible. The mathematics are so self-evident that they don't need to be calculated. It's rather like my asking you whether, on a billion dollars in income, you had to pay tax. You wouldn't need to pull out your calculator to check. You'd know tax was owed. And, similarly, I know overwhelmingly that one cannot successfully duplicate nature in this way, or hope to isolate it."

    "Why not? After all, there are zoos."

    "Zoos don't re-create nature," Malcolm said. "Let's be clear. Zoos take the nature that already exists and modify it very slightly, to create holding pens for animals. Even those minimal modifications often fail. The animals escape with regularity. But a zoo is not a model for this park. This park is attempting something far more ambitious than that. Something much more akin to making a space station on earth."

    Gennaro shook his head. "I don't understand."

    "Well, it's very simple. Except for the air, which flows freely, everything about this park is meant to be isolated. Nothing gets in, nothing out. The animals kept here are never to mix with the greater ecosystems of earth. They are never to escape."

    "And they never have," Hammond snorted.

    "Such isolation is impossible," Malcolm said flatly. "It simply cannot be done."

    "It can. It's done all the time."

    "I beg your pardon," Malcolm said. "But you don't know what you are talking about."

    "You arrogant little snot," Hammond said. He stood, and walked out of the room.

    "Gentlemen, gentlemen," Gennaro said.

    "I'm sorry," Malcolm said, "but the point remains. What we call 'nature' is in fact a complex system of far greater subtlety than we are willing to accept. We make a simplified image of nature and then we botch it up, I'm no environmentalist, but you have to understand what you don't understand. How many times must the point be made? How many times must we see the evidence? We build the Aswan Dam and claim it is going to revitalize the country. Instead, it destroys the fertile Nile Delta, produces parasitic infestation, and wrecks the Egyptian economy. We build the-"

    "Excuse me," Gennaro said. "But I think I hear the helicopter. That's probably the sample for Dr. Grant to look at." He started out of the room. They all followed.

    At the foot of the mountain, Gennaro was screaming over the sound of the helicopter. The veins of his neck stood out. "You did what? You invited who?"

    "Take it easy," Hammond said.

    Gennaro screamed, "Are you out of your goddamned mind?"

    "Now, look here," Hammond said, drawing himself up. "I think we have to get something clear-"

    "No," Gennaro said. "No, you get something clear. This is not a social outing. This is not a weekend excursion-"

    "This is my island," Hammond said, "and I can invite whomever I want."

    "This is a serious investigation of your island because your investors are concerned that it's out of control. We think this is a very dangerous place, and-"

    "You're not going to shut me down, Donald-"

    "I will if I have to-"

    "This is a safe place," Hammond said, "no matter what that damn mathematician is saying-"

    "It's not-"

    "And I'll demonstrate its safety-"

    "And I want you to put them Tight back on that helicopter," Gennaro said.

    "Can't," Hammond said, pointing toward the clouds. "It's already leaving." And, indeed, the sound of the rotors was fading.

    "God damn it," Gennaro said, "don't you see you're needlessly risking-"

    "Ah ah," Hammond said. "Let's continue this later. I don't want to upset the children."

    Grant turned, and saw two children coming down the hillside, led by Ed Regis. There was a bespectacled boy of about eleven, and a girl a few years younger, perhaps seven or eight, her blond hair pushed up under a Mets baseball cap, and a baseball glove slung over her shoulder. The two kids made their way nimbly down the path from the helipad, and stopped some distance from Gennaro and Hammond.

    Low, under his breath, Gennaro said, "Christ."

    "Now, take it easy," Hammond said. "Their parents are getting a divorce, and I want them to have a fun weekend here."

    The girl waved tentatively.

    "Hi, Grandpa," she said. "We're here."

    The Tour

    Tim Murphy could see at once that something was wrong. His grandfather was in the middle of an argument with the younger, red-faced man opposite him. And the other adults, standing behind, looked embarrassed and uncomfortable. Alexis felt the tension, too, because she hung back, tossing her baseball in the air. He had to push her: "Go on, Lex."

    "Go on yourself, Timmy."

    "Don't be a worm," he said.

    Lex glared at him, but Ed Regis said cheerfully, "I'll introduce you to everybody, and then we can take the tour."

    "I have to go," Lex said.

    "I'll just introduce you first," Ed Regis said.

    "No, I have to go."

    But Ed Regis was already making introductions. First to Grandpa, who kissed them both, and then to the man he was arguing with. This man was muscular and his name was Gennaro. The rest of the introductions Were a blur to Tim. There was a blond woman wearing shorts, and a man with a beard who wore jeans and a Hawaiian shirt. He looked like the outdoors type. Then a fat college kid who had something to do with computers, and finally a thin man in black, who didn't shake hands, but just nodded his head. Tim was trying to organize his impressions, and was looking at the blond woman's legs, when he suddenly realized that he knew who the bearded man was.

    "Your mouth is open," Lex said.

    Tim said, "I know him."

    "Oh sure. You just met him."

    "No," Tim said. "I have his book."

    The bearded man said, "What book is that, Tim?"

    "Lost World of the Dinosaurs, " Tim said.

    Alexis snickered. "Daddy says Tim has dinosaurs on the brain," she said.

    Tim hardly heard her. He was thinking of what he knew about Alan Grant. Alan Grant was one of the principal advocates of the theory that dinosaurs were warm-blooded. He had done lots of digging at the place called Egg Hill in Montana, which was famous because so many dinosaur eggs had been found there. Professor Grant had found most of the dinosaur eggs that had ever been discovered. He was also a good illustrator, and he drew the pictures for his own books.

    "Dinosaurs on the brain?" the bearded man said. "Well, as a matter of fact, I have that same problem."

    "Dad says dinosaurs are really stupid," Lex said. "He says Tim should get out in the air and play more sports,"

    Tim felt embarrassed. "I thought you had to go," he said.

    "In a minute," Lex said.

    "I thought you were in such a rush."

    "I'm the one who would know, don't you think, Timothy?" she said putting her hands on her hips, copying her mother's most irritating stance.

    "Tell you what," Ed Regis said. "Why don't we all just head on over to the visitor center and we can begin our tour." Everybody started walking. Tim heard Gennaro whisper to his grandfather, "I could kill you for this," and then Tim looked up and saw that Dr Grant had fallen into step beside him.

    "How old are you, Tim?"

    "Eleven."

    "And how long have you been interested in dinosaurs?" Grant asked.

    Tim swallowed. "A while now," he said. He felt nervous to be talking to Dr. Grant. "We go to museums sometimes, when I can talk my family into it. My father."

    "Your father's not especially interested?"

    Tim nodded, and told Grant about his family's last trip to the Museum of Natural History. His father had looked at a skeleton and said, "That's a big one."

    Tim had said, "No, Dad, that's a medium-size one, a camptosaurus."

    "Oh, I don't know. Looks pretty big to me."

    "It's not even full-grown, Dad."

    His father squinted at the skeleton. "What is it, Jurassic?"

    "Jeez. No. Cretaceous."

    "Cretaceous? What's the difference between Cretaceous and Jurassic?"

    "Only about a hundred million years," Tim said.

    "Cretaceous is older?"

    "No, Dad, Jurassic is older."

    "Well," his father said, stepping back, "it looks pretty damn big to me." And he turned to Tim for agreement. Tim knew he had better agree with his father, so he just muttered something. And they went on to another exhibit-

    Tim stood in front of one skeleton-Tyrannosaurus rex, the mightiest predator the earth had ever known-for a long time. Finally his father said, "What are you looking at?"

    "I'm counting the vertebrae," Tim said.

    "The vertebrae?"

    "In the backbone."

    I know what vertebrae are," his father said, annoyed. He stood there a while longer and then he said, "Why are you counting them?"

    "I think they're wrong. Tyrannosaurs should only have thirty-seven vertebrae in the tall. This has more."

    "You mean to tell me," his father said, "that the Museum of Natural History has a skeleton that's wrong? I can't believe that."

    "It's wrong," Tim said.

    His father stomped off toward a guard in the corner. "What did you do now?" his mother said to Tim.

    "I didn't do anything," Tim said. "I just said the dinosaur is wrong, that's all."

    And then his father came back with a funny look on his face, because of course the guard told him that the tyrannosaurus had too many vertebrae in the tail.

    "How'd you know that?" his father asked.

    "I read it," Tim said.

    "That's pretty amazing, son," he said, and he put his hand on his shoulder, giving it a squeeze. "You know how many vertebrae belong in that tail. I've never seen anything like it. You really do have dinosaurs on the brain."

    And then his father said he wanted to catch the last half of the Mets game on TV, and Lex said she did, too, so they left the museum. And Tim didn't see any other dinosaurs, which was why they had come there in the first place. But that was how things happened in his family.

    ow things used to happen in his family, Tim corrected himself. Now that his father was getting a divorce from his mother, things would probably be different. His father had already moved out, and even though it was weird at first, Tim liked it. He thought his mother had a boyfriend, but he couldn't be sure, and of course he would never mention it to Lex. Lex was heartbroken to be separated from her father, and in the last few weeks she had become so obnoxious that-

    "Was it 5027?" Grant said.

    "I'm sorry?" Tim said.

    "The tyrannosaurus at the museum. Was it 5027?"

    "Yes," Tim said. "How'd you know?"

    Grant smiled. "They've been talking about fixing it for years. But now it may never happen."

    "Why is that?"

    "Because of what is taking place here," Grant said, "on your grandfather's island."