Jurassic Park - Crichton Michael. Страница 65

"Before we destroy the planet?" she said.

He sighed, and closed his eyes. "Oh dear," he said. "That's the last thing I would worry about."

In the dark tunnel of the jungle river, Grant went hand over hand, holding branches, moving the raft cautiously forward. He still heard the sounds. And finally he saw the dinosaurs.

"Aren't those the ones that are poison?"

"Yes," Grant said. "Dilophosaurus."

Standing on the riverbank were two dilophosaurs. The ten-foot-tall bodies were spotted yellow and black. Underneath, the bellies were bright green, like lizards. Twin red curving crests ran along the top of the head from the eyes to the nose, making a V shape above the head. The bird-like quality was reinforced by the way they moved, bending to drink from the river, then rising to snarl and hoot.

Lex whispered, "Should we get out and walk?"

Grant shook his head no. The dilophosaurs were smaller than the tyrannosaur, small enough to slip through the dense foliage at the banks of the river. And they seemed quick, as they snarled and hooted at each other.

"But we can't get past them in the boat," Lex said. "They're poison."

"We have to," Grant said. "Somehow."

The dilophosaurs continued to drink and hoot. They seemed to be interacting with each other in a strangely ritualistic, repetitive way. The animal on the left would bend to drink, opening its mouth to bare long rows of sharp teeth, and then it would hoot. The animal on the right would boot in reply and bend to drink, in a mirror image of the first animal's movements. Then the sequence would be repeated, exactly the same way.

Grant noticed that the animal on the right was smaller, with smaller spots on its back, and its crest was a duller red-

"I'll be damned," he said. "It's a mating ritual."

"Can we get past them?" Tim asked.

"Not the way they are now. They're right by the edge of the water." Grant knew animals often performed such mating rituals for hours at a time. They went without food, they paid attention to nothing else… He glanced at his watch. Nine-twenty.

"What do we do?" Tim said.

Grant sighed. "I have no idea."

He sat down in the raft, and then the dilopbosaurs began to bonk and roar repeatedly, in agitation. He looked up. The animals were both facing away from the river.

"What is it?" Lex said.

Grant smiled, "I think we're finally getting some help." He pushed off from the bank. "I want you two kids to lie flat on the rubber. We'll go past as fast as we can. But just remember: whatever happens, don't say anything, and don't move- Okay?"

The raft began to drift downstream, toward the hooting dilophosaurs. It gained speed. Lex lay at Grant's feet, staring at him with friehtened eyes. They were coming closer to the dilophosaurs, which were still turned away from the river. But he pulled out his air pistol, checked the chamber.

The raft continued on, and they smelled a peculiar odor, sweet and nauseating at the same time. It smelled like dried vomit. The hooting of the dilophosaurs was louder. The raft came around a final bend and Grant caught his breath. The dilophosaurs were just a few feet away, honking at the trees beyond the river.

As Grant had suspected, they were honking at the tyrannosaur. The tyrannosaur was trying to break through the foliage, and the dilos hooted and stomped their feet in the mud. The raft drifted past them. The smell was nauseating. The tyrannosaur roared, probably because it saw the raft. But in another moment…

A thump.

The raft stopped moving. They were aground, against the riverbank, just a few feet downstream from the dilophosaurs.

Lex whispered, "Oh, great "

There was a long slow scraping sound of the raft against the mud. Then the raft was moving again. They were going down the river. The tyrannosaur roared a final time and moved off; one dilophosaur looked surprised, then hooted. The other dilophosaur hooted in reply.

The raft floated downriver.

The Jeep bounced along in the glaring sun. Muldoon was driving, with Gennaro at his side. They were in an open field, moving away from the dense line of foliage and palm trees that marked the course of the river, a hundred yards to the east. They came to a rise, and Muldoon stopped the car.

"Christ, it's hot," he said, wiping his forehead with the back of his arm. He drank from the bottle of whiskey between his knees, then offered it to Gennaro.

Gennaro shook his head. He stared at the landscape shimmering in the morning heat. Then he looked down at the onboard computer and video monitor mounted in the dashboard. The monitor showed views of the park from remote cameras. Still no sign of Grant and the children. Or of the tyrannosaur.

The radio crackled. "Muldoon."

Muldoon picked up the handset. "Yeah."

"You got your onboards? I found the rex. He's in grid 442. Going to 443."

"Just a minute," Muldoon said, adjusting the monitor. "Yeah. I got him now. Following the river." The animal was slinking along the foliage that lined the banks of the river, going north.

"Take it easy with him. Just immobilize him."

"Don't worry," Muldoon said, squinting in the sun. "I won't hurt him."

"Remember," Arnold said, "the tyrannosaur's our main tourist attraction."

Muldoon turned off his radio with a crackle of static. "Bloody fool," he said. "They're still talking about tourists." Muldoon started the engine. "Let's go see Rexy and give him a dose."

The Jeep jolted over the terrain.

"You're looking forward to this," Gennaro said.

"I've wanted to put a needle in this big bastard for a while," Muldoon said. "And there he is."

They came to a wrenching stop. Through the windshield, Gennaro saw the tyrannosaur directly ahead of them, moving among the palm trees along the river.

Muldoon drained the whiskey bottle and threw it in the back seat. He reached back for his tubing. Gennaro looked at the video monitor, which showed their Jeep and the tyrannosaur. There must be a closed-circuit camera in the trees somewhere behind.

"You want to help," Muldoon said, "you can break out those canisters by your feet."

Gennaro bent over and opened a stainless-steel Halliburton case. It was padded inside with foam. Four cylinders, each the size of a quart milk bottle, were nestled in the foam. They were all labeled MORO-709. He took one out.

"You snap off the tip and screw on a needle," Muldoon explained.

Gennaro found a plastic package of large needles, each the diameter of his fingertip. He screwed one onto the canister. The opposite end of the canister had a circular lead weight.

"That's the plunger. Compresses on impact." Muldoon sat forward with the air rifle across his knees. It was made of heavy gray tubular metal and looked to Gennaro like a bazooka or a rocket launcher.

"What's MORO-709?"

"Standard animal trank," Muldoon said, "Zoos around the world use it. We'll try a thousand cc's to start." Muldoon cracked open the chamber, which was large enough to insert his fist. He slipped the canister into the chamber and closed it.

"That should do it," Muldoon said. "Standard elephant gets about two hundred cc's, but they're only two or three tons each. Tyrannosaurus rex is eight tons, and a lot meaner. That matters to the dose."

"Why?"

"Animal dose is partly body weight and partly temperament. You shoot the same dose of 709 into an elephant, a hippo, and a rhino-you'll immobilize the elephant, so it just stands there like a statue. You'll slow down the hippo, so it gets kind of sleepy but it keeps moving. And the rhino will just get fighting mad. But, on the other hand, you chase a rhino for more than five minutes in a car and he'll drop dead from adrenaline shock. Strange combination of tough and delicate."

Muldoon drove slowly toward the river, moving closer to the tyrannosaur. "But those are all mammals. We know a lot about handling mammals, because zoos are built around the big mammalian attractions-lions, tigers, bears, elephants. We know a lot less about reptiles. And nobody knows anything about dinosaurs. The dinosaurs are new animals."

"You consider them reptiles?" Gennaro said.

"No," Muldoon said, shifting gears. "Dinosaurs don't fit existing categories." He swerved to avoid a rock. "Actually, what we find is, the dinosaurs were as variable as mammals are today. Some dinos are tame and cute, and some are mean and nasty. Some of them see well, and some of them don't. Some of them are stupid, and some of them are very, very intelligent."

"Like the raptors?" Gennaro said.

Muldoon nodded. "Raptors are smart, Very smart. Believe me, all the problems we have so far," he said, "are nothing compared with what we'd have if the raptors ever got out of their holding pen. Ah. I think this is as close as we can get to our Rexy."

Up ahead, the tyrannosaur was poking its head through the branches, peering toward the river. Trying to get through. Then the animal moved a few yards downstream, to try again,

"Wonder what he sees in there?" Gennaro said.

"Hard to know," Muldoon said. "Maybe he's trying to get to the microceratopsians that scramble around in the branches. They'll run him a merry chase."

Muldoon stopped the Jeep about fifty yards away from the tyrannosaur, and turned the vehicle around. He left the motor running. "Get behind the wheel," Muldoon said. "And put your seat belt on." He took another canister and booked it onto his shirt. Then he got out.

Gennaro slid behind the wheel. "You done this very often before?"

Muldoon belched. "Never. I'll try to get him just behind the auditory meatus. We'll see how it goes from there." He walked ten yards behind the Jeep and crouched down in the grass on one knee. He steadied the big gun against his shoulder, and flipped up the thick telescopic sight. Muldoon aimed at the tyrannosaur, which still ignored them.

There was a burst of pale gas, and Gennaro saw a white streak shoot forward in the air toward the tyrannosaur. But nothing seemed to happen.

Then the tyrannosaur turned slowly, curiously, to peer at them. It moved its head from side to side, as if looking at them with alternate eyes.