“But it’s much too shiny,” Levine said. “We should have made it matte black.”
Thorne said, “Eddie, we need to hide this.”
“Want to spray it, Doc? I think I brought some black paint.”
Levine shook his head. “No, then it’ll smell. How about those palms?”
“Sure, we can do that.” Eddie walked to a stand of nearby palms, and began to hack away big fronds with his machete.
Kelly stared up at the aluminum strut assembly. “It’s great,” she said. “But what is it?”
“It’s a high hide,” Levine said. “Come on.” And he began to climb the scaffolding.
* * *
The structure at the top was a little house, its roof supported by aluminum bars spaced four feet apart. The floor of the house was also made of aluminum bars, but these were closer together, about six inches apart. Their feet threatened to slip through, so Levine took the first of the bundles of fronds that Eddie Carr was raising on a rope, and used them to make a more complete floor. The remaining fronds he tied to the outside of the house, concealing its structure.
Arby and Kelly stared out at the animals. From their vantage point, they could look across the whole valley. There was a distant herd of apatosaurs, on the other side of the river. A cluster of triceratops browsed to the north. Nearer the water, some duck-billed dinosaurs with long crests rising above their heads moved forward to drink. A low, trumpeting cry from the duckbills floated across the valley toward them: a deep, unearthly sound. A moment later, there was an answering cry, from the forest at the opposite side of the valley.
“What was that?” Kelly said.
“Parasaurolophus,” Levine said. “It’s trumpeting through its nuchal crest. Low-frequency sound carries a long distance.”
To the south, there was a herd of dark-green animals, with large curved protruding foreheads, and a rim of small knobby horns. They looked a little like buffalo. “What do you call those?” Kelly said.
“Good question,” Levine said. “They are most likely Pachycephalosaurus wyomingensis. But it’s difficult to say for sure, because a full skeleton for these animals has never been recovered. Their foreheads are very thick bone, so we’ve found many domed cranial fragments. But this is the first time I’ve ever seen the whole animal.”
“And those heads? What are they for?” Arby said.
“Nobody knows,” Levine said. “Everyone has assumed they’re used for butting, for intraspecies fighting among males. Competition for females, that sort of thing.”
Malcolm climbed up into the hide. “Yes, butting heads,” he said sourly. “Just as you see them now.”
“All right,” Levine said, “so they’re not butting heads at the moment. Perhaps their breeding season is concluded.”
“Or perhaps they don’t do it at all,” Malcolm said, staring at the green animals. “They look pretty peaceful to me.”
“Yes,” Levine said, “but of course that doesn’t mean a thing. African buffalo appear peaceful most of the time, too—in fact, they usually just stand motionless. Yet they’re unpredictable and dangerous animals. We have to presume those domes exist for a reason—even if we’re not seeing it now.”
Levine turned to the kids. “That’s why we made this structure. We want to make round-the-clock observations on the animals,” he said. “To the extent possible, we want a full record of their activities.”
“Why?” Arby said.
“Because,” Malcolm said, “this island presents a unique opportunity to study the greatest mystery in the history of our planet: extinction.”
“You see,” Malcolm said, “when InGen shut down their facility, they did it hastily, and they left some live animals behind. That was five or six years ago. Dinosaurs mature rapidly; most species attain adulthood in four or five years. By now, the first generation of InGen dinosaurs—bred in a laboratory—has attained maturity, and has begun to breed a new generation, entirely in the wild. There is now a complete ecological system on this island, with a dozen or so dinosaur species living in social groups, for the first time in sixty-five million years.”
Arby said, “So why is that an opportunity?”
Malcolm pointed across the plain. “Well, think about it. Extinction is a very difficult research topic. There are dozens of competing theories. The fossil record is incomplete. And you can’t perform experiments. Galileo could climb the tower of Pisa and drop balls to test his theory of gravity. He never actually did it, but he could have. Newton used prisms to test his theory of light. Astronomers observed eclipses to test Einstein’s theory of relativity. Testing occurs throughout science. But how can you test a theory of extinction? You can’t.”
Arby said, “But here . . .”
“Yes,” Malcolm said. “What we have here is a population of extinct animals artificially introduced into a closed environment, and allowed to evolve all over again. There’s never been anything like it in all history. We already know these animals became extinct once. But nobody knows why.”
“And you expect to find out? In a few days?”
“Yes,” Malcolm said. “We do.”
“How? You don’t expect them to become extinct again, do you?”
“You mean, right before our eyes?” Malcolm laughed. “No, no. Nothing like that. But the point is, for the first time we aren’t just studying bones. We’re seeing live animals, and observing their behavior. I have a theory, and I think that even in a short time, we will see evidence for that theory.”
“What evidence?” Kelly said.
“What theory?” Arby said.
Malcolm smiled at them. “Wait,” he said.
The Red Queen
The apatosaurs had come down to the river in the heat of the day; their graceful curving necks were reflected in the water as they bent to drink. Their long, whip-like tails swung back and forth lazily. Several younger apatosaurs, much smaller than the adults, scampered about in the center of the herd.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Levine said. “The way it all fits together. Just beautiful.” He leaned over the side and shouted to Thorne, “Where’s my mount?”
“Coming up,” Thorne said.
The rope now brought up a heavy wide-based tripod, and a circular mount on top. There were five video cameras atop the mount, and dangling wires leading to solar panels. Levine and Malcolm began to set it up.
“What happens to the video?” Arby said.
“The data gets multiplexed, and we uplink it back to California. By satellite. We’ll also hook into the security network. So we’ll have lots of observation points.”
“And we don’t have to be here?”
“Right.”
“And this is what you call a high hide?”
“Yes. At least, that’s what scientists like Sarah Harding call it.”
Thorne climbed up to join them. The little shelter was now quite crowded, but Levine didn’t seem to notice. He was entirely focused on the dinosaurs; he turned a pair of binoculars on the animals spread across the plain. “Just as we thought,” he said to Malcolm. “Spatial organization. Infants and juveniles in the center of the herd, protective adults on the periphery. The apatosaurs use their tails as defense.”
“That’s the way it looks.”
“Oh, there’s no question about it,” Levine said. He sighed. “It’s so agreeable to be proven right.”
On the ground below, Eddie unpacked the circular aluminum cage, the same one they had seen in California. It was six feet tall and four feet in diameter, constructed of one-inch titanium bars. “What do you want me to do with this?” Eddie said.
“Leave it down there,” Levine said. “That’s where it belongs.”
Eddie set the cage upright in the corner of the scaffolding. Levine climbed down.
“And what’s that for?” Arby said, looking down. “Catching a dinosaur?”
“In point of fact, just the opposite.” Levine clipped the cage to the side of the scaffolding. He swung the doo
r open and shut, testing it. There was a lock in the door. He checked the lock, too, leaving the key in place, with its dangling elastic loop. “It’s a predator cage, like a shark cage,” Levine said. “If you’re down here walking around and anything happens, you can climb in here, and you’ll be safe.”
“In case what happens?” Arby said, with a worried look.
“Actually, I don’t think anything will happen,” Levine said, climbing back up. “Because I doubt the animals will pay any attention to us, or to this little house, once the structure’s been concealed.”
“You mean they won’t see it?”
“Oh, they’ll see it,” Levine said, “but they’ll ignore it.”