Jurassic Park - Crichton Michael - Страница 53

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'Shouldn't you call the doctor?"

"There's no doctor on the island. Harding's the best we have."

"But surely you can call for a doctor-" she said.

"No." Muldoon shook his head. "Phone lines are down. We can't call out." He shifted the package in his arm.

"What's that?" she said.

"Nothing. Just go to Malcolm's room, and help Harding, if you will."

And Muldoon was gone.

She sat on her bed, shocked. Ellie Sattler was not a woman disposed to unnecessary panic, and she had known Grant to get out of dangerous situations before. Once he'd been lost in the badlands for four days when a cliff gave way beneath him and his truck fell a hundred feet into a ravine. Grant's right leg was broken. He had no water. But he walked back on a broken leg.

On the other hand, the kids…

She shook her head, pushing the thought away. The kids were probably with Grant. And if Grant was out in the park, well… what better person to get them safely through Jurassic Park than a dinosaur expert?

"I'm tired," Lex said. "Carry me, Dr. Grant." "You're too big to carry," Tim said.

"But I'm tired," she said.

"Okay, Lex," Grant said, picking her up. "Oof, you're heavy."

It was almost 9:00 p.m. The full moon was blurred by drifting mist, and their blunted shadows led them across an open field, toward dark woods beyond. Grant was lost in thought, trying to decide where he was. Since they had originally crossed over the fence that the tyrannosaur had battered down, Grant was reasonably sure they were now somewhere in the tyrannosaur paddock. Which was a place he did not want to be. In his mind, he kept seeing the computer tracing of the tyrannosaur's home range, the tight squiggle of lines that traced his movements within a small area. He and the kids were in that area now.

But Grant also remembered that the tyrannosaurs were isolated from all the other animals, which meant they would know they had left the paddock when they crossed a barrier-a fence, or a moat, or both.

He had seen no barriers, so far.

The girl put her head on his shoulder, and twirled her hair in her fingers. Soon she was snoring. Tim trudged alongside Grant.

"How you holding up, Tim?"

"Okay," he said. "But I think we might be in the tyrannosaur area."

"I'm pretty sure we are. I hope we get out soon."

"You going to go into the woods?" Tim said. As they came closer, the woods seemed dark and forbidding.

"Yes," Grant said. "I think we can navigate by the numbers on the motion sensors."

The motion sensors were green boxes set about four feet off the ground. Some were freestanding; most were attached to trees. None of them were working, because apparently the power was still off. Each sensor box had a glass lens mounted in the center, and a painted code number beneath that. Up ahead, in the mist-streaked moonlight, Grant could see a box marked T/S/04.

They entered the forest. Huge trees loomed on all sides. In the moonlight, a low mist clung to the ground, curling around the roots of the trees. It was beautiful, but it made walking treacherous. And Grant was watching the sensors. They seemed to be numbered in descending order. He passed T/S/03, and T/S/02. Eventually they reached T/S/01. He was tired from carrying the girl, and he had hoped this would coincide with a boundary for the tyrannosaur paddock, but it was just another box in the middle of the woods. The next box after that was marked T/N/01, followed by T/N/02. Grant realized the numbers must be arranged geographically around a central point, like a compass. They were going from soutb to north, so the numbers got smaller as they approached the center, then got larger again.

"At least we're going the right way," Tim said.

"Good for you," Grant said.

Tim smiled, and stumbled over vines in the mist. He got quickly to his feet. They walked on for a while. "My parents are getting a divorce," he said.

"Uh-huh," Grant said.

"My dad moved out last month. He has his own place in Mill Valley now.

"Uh-huh."

"He never carries my sister any more. He never even picks her up."

"And he says you have dinosaurs on the brain," Grant said.

Tim sighed. "Yeah."

"You miss him?" Grant said.

"Not really," Tim said. "Sometimes. She misses him more."

"Who, your mother?"

"No, Lex. My mom has a boyfriend. She knows him from work."

They walked in silence for a while, passing T/N/03 and T/N/04. "Have you met him?" Grant said.

"Yeah."

"How is he?"

"He's okay," Tim said. "He's younger than my dad, but he's bald."

"How does he treat you?"

"I don't know. Okay. I think he just tries to get on my good side. I don't know what's going to happen. Sometimes my mom says we'll have to sell the house and move. Sometimes he and my mom fight, late at night. I sit in my room and play with my computer, but I can still hear it."

"Uh-huh," Grant said.

"Are you divorced?"

"No," Grant said. "My wife died a long time ago."

"And now you're with Dr. Sattler?"

Grant smiled in the darkness. "No. She's my student."

"You mean she's still in school?"

"Graduate school, yes." Grant paused long enough to shift Lex to his other shoulder, and then they continued on, past T/N/05 and T/N/06. There was the rumble of thunder in the distance. The storm had moved to the south. There was very little sound in the forest except for the drone of cicadas and the soft croaking of tree frogs.

You have children?" Tim asked.

"No," Crant said.

"Are you going to marry Dr. Sattler?"

"No, she's marrying a nice doctor in Chicago sometime next year.

"Oh," Tim said. He seemed surprised to hear it. They walked along for a while. "Then who are you going to marry?"

"I don't think I'm going to marry anybody," Grant said.

"Me neither," Tim said.

They walked for a while. Tim said, "Are we going to walk all night?"

"I don't think I can," Grant said. "We'll have to stop, at least for a few hours." He glanced at his watch. "We're okay. We've got almost fifteen hours before we have to be back. Before the ship reaches the mainland."

"Where are we going to stop?" Tim asked, immediately.

Grant was wondering the same thing. His first thought was that thev might climb a tree, and sleep up there. But they would have to climb very high to get safely away from the animals, and Lex might fall out while she was asleep. And tree branches were hard; they wouldn't get any rest. At least, he wouldn't.

They needed someplace really safe. He thought back to the plans he had seen on the jet coming down. He remembered that there were outlying buildings for each of the different divisions. Grant didn't know what they were like, because plans for the individual buildings weren't included. And he couldn't remember exactly where they were, but he remembered they were scattered all around the park. There might be buildings somewhere nearby.

But that was a different requirement from simply crossing a barrier and getting out of the tyrannosaur paddock, Finding a building meant a search strategy of some kind. And the best strategies were-

"Tim, can you hold your sister for me? I'm going to climb a tree and have a look around."

High in the branches, he had a good view of the forest, the tops of the trees extending away to his left and right. They were surprisingly near the edge of the forest-directly ahead the trees ended before a clearing, with an electrified fence and a pale concrete moat. Beyond that, a large open field in what he assumed was the sauropod paddock. In the distance, more trees, and misty moonlight sparkling on the ocean.

Somewhere he heard the bellowing of a dinosaur, but it was far away. He put on Tim's night-vision goggles and looked again. He followed the gray curve of the moat, and then saw what he was looking for: the dark strip of a service road, leading to the flat rectangle of a roof. The roof was barely above ground level, but it was there. And it wasn't far. Maybe a quarter of a mile or so from the tree.

When he came back down, Lex was sniffling.

"What's the matter?"

"I heard an aminal."

"It won't bother us. Are you awake now? Come on."

He led her to the fence. It was twelve feet high, with a spiral of barbed wire at the top. It seemed to stretch far above them in the moonligbt. The moat was immediately on the other side.

Lex looked up at the fence doubtfully.

"Can you climb it?" Grant asked her.

She handed him her glove, and her baseball. "Sure. Easy." She started to climb. "But I bet Timmy can't."

Tim spun in fury: "You shut up."

"Timmy's afraid of heights."

"I am not."

She climbed higher. "Are so."

"Am not."

"Then come and get me."

Grant turned to Tim, pale in the darkness. The boy wasn't moving. "You okay with the fence, Tim?"

"Sure."

"Want some help?"

"Timmy's a fraidy-cat," Lex called.

"What a stupid jerk," Tim said, and he started to climb.

"It's freezing," Lex said. They were standing waist-deep in smelly water at the bottom of a deep concrete moat. They had climbed the fence without incident, except that Tim had torn his shirt on the coils of barbed wire at the top. Then they had all slid down into the moat, and now Grant was looking for a way out.

"At least I got Timmy over the fence for you," Lex said. "He really is scared most times."

"Thanks for your help," Tim said sarcastically. In the moonlight, he could see floating lumps on the surface. He moved along the moat, looking at the concrete wall on the far side. The concrete was smooth; they couldn't possibly climb it.

"Eww," Lex said, pointing to the water.

"It won't hurt you, Lex."

Grant finally found a place where the concrete had cracked and a vine grew down toward the water. He tugged on the vine, and it held his weight. "Let's go, kids." They started to climb the vine, back to the field above.

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