Michael Crichton - Jurassic Park

"Yes."

"On the dietary habits of juvenile dinosaurs?"

"Yes."

"You met Gennaro?"

"No. Just on the phone."

"Did Gennaro say why he wanted this information?"

"Yes," Grant said. "He was planning a museum for children, and he wanted to feature baby dinosaurs. He said he was hiring a number of academic consultants, and named them. There were paleontologists like me, and a mathematician from Texas named Ian Malcolm, and a couple of ecologists. A systems analyst. Good group."

Morris nodded, making notes. "So you accepted the consultancy?"

"Yes. I agreed to send him a summary of our work: what we knew about the habits of the duckbilled hadrosaurs we'd found."

"What kind of information did you send?" Morris asked.

"Everything: nesting behavior, territorial ranges, feeding behavior, social behavior. Everything."

"And how did Gennaro respond?"

"He kept calling and calling. Sometimes in the middle of the night. Would the dinosaurs eat this? Would they eat that? Should the exhibit include this? I could never understand why he was so worked up. I mean, I think dinosaurs are important, too, but not that important. They've been dead sixty-five million years. You'd think his calls could wait until morning."

"I see," Morris said. "And the fifty thousand dollars?"

Grant shook his head. "I got tired of Gennaro and called the whole thing off. We settled up for twelve thousand. That must have been about the middle of '85."

Morris made a note. "And InGen? Any other contact with them?"

"Not since 1985."

"And when did the Hammond Foundation begin to fund your research?"

"I'd have to look," Grant said. "But it was around then. Mid-eighties."

"And you know Hammond as just a rich dinosaur enthusiast."

"Yes."

Morris made another note.

"Look," Grant said. "If the EPA is so concerned about John Hammond and what he's doing-the dinosaur sites in the north, the amber purchases, the island in Costa Rica-why don't you 'ust ask him about it?"

"At the moment, we can't," Morris said. "Why not?" Grant said.

"Because we don't have any evidence of wrongdoing," Morris said. "But personally, I think it's clear John Hammond is evading the law."

"I was first contacted," Morris explained, "by the Office of Technology Transfer. The OTT monitors shipments of American technology which might have military significance. They called to say that InGen had two areas of possible illegal technology transfer. First, InGen shipped three Cray XMPs to Costa Rica. InGen characterized it as transfer within corporate divisions, and said they weren't for resale. But OTT couldn't imagine why the hell somebody'd need that power in Costa Rica."

"Three Crays," Grant said. "is that a kind of computer?"

Morris nodded. "Very powerful supercomputers. To put it in perspective, three Crays represent more computing power than any other privately held company in America. And InGen sent the machines to Costa Rica. You have to wonder why."

"I give up. Why?" Grant said.

"Nobody knows. And the Hoods are even more worrisome," Morris continued. "Hoods are automated gene sequencers-machines that work out the genetic code by themselves. They're so new that they haven't been put on the restricted lists yet. But any genetic engineering lab is likely to have one, if it can afford the half-million-dollar price tag." He flipped through his notes. "Well, it seems InGen shipped twenty-four Hood sequencers to their island in Costa Rica.

"Again, they said it was a transfer within divisions and not an export," Morris said. "There wasn't much that OTT could do. They're not officially concerned with use. But InGen was obviously setting up one of the most powerful genetic engineering facilities in the world in an obscure Central American country. A country with no regulations. That kind of thing has happened before."

There had already been cases of American bioenginecring companies moving to another country so they would not be hampered by regulations and rules. The most flagrant, Morris explained, was the Biosyn rabies case.

In 1986, Genetic Biosyn Corporation of Cupertino tested a bioengineered rabies vaccine on a farm in Chile. They didn't inform the government of Chile, or the farm workers involved. They simply released the vaccine.

The vaccine consisted of live rabies virus, genetically modified to be nonvirulent. But the virulence hadn't been tested; Biosyn didn't know whether the virus could still cause rabies or not. Even worse, the virus had been modified. Ordinarily you couldn't contract rabies unless you were bitten by an animal. But Biosyn modified the rabies virus to cross the pulmonary alveoli; you could get an infection just inhaling it. Biosyn staffers brought this live rabies virus down to Chile in a carry-on bag on a commercial airline flight. Morris often wondered what would have happened if the capsule had broken open during the flight. Everybody on the plane might have been infected with rabies.

It was outrageous. It was irresponsible. It was criminally negligent. But no action was taken against Biosyn. The Chilean farmers who unwittingly risked their lives were ignorant peasants; the government of Chile had an economic crisis to worry about; and the American authorities had no jurisdiction. So Lewis Dodgson, the geneticist responsible for the test, was still working at Biosyn. Biosyn was still as reckless as ever. And other American companies were hurrying to set up facilities in foreign countries that lacked sophistication about genetic research. Countries that perceived genetic engineering to be like any other high-tech development, and thus welcomed it to their lands, unaware of the dangers posed.

"So that's why we began our investigation of InGen," Morris said. "About three weeks ago."

"And what have you actually found?" Grant said.

"Not much," Morris admitted. "When I go back to San Francisco, we'll probably have to close the investigation. And I think I'm about finished here." He started packing up his briefcase- "By the way, what does 'juvenile hyperspace' mean?"

"That's just a fancy label for my report," Grant said. " 'Hyperspace' is a term for multidimensional space-like three-dimensional tic-tac-toe. I you were to take all the behaviors of an animal, its eating and movement and sleeping, you could plot the animal within the multidimensional space. Some paleontologists refer to the behavior of an animal as occurring in an ecological hyperspace. 'Juvenile hyperspace' would just refer to the behavior of juvenile dinosaurs-if you wanted to be as pretentious as possible."

At the far end of the trailer, the phone rang. Ellie answered it. She said, "He's in a meeting right now. Can he call you back?"

Morris snapped his briefcase shut and stood. "Thanks for your help and the beer," he said.

"No problem," Grant said.

Grant walked with Morris down the trailer to the door at the far end. Morris said, "Did Hammond ever ask for any physical materials from your site? Bones, or eggs, or anything like that?"

"No," Grant said.

"Dr. Sattler mentioned you do some genetic work here…"

"Well, not exactly," Grant said. "When we remove fossils that are broken or for some other reason not suitable for museum preservation, we send the bones out to a lab that grinds them up and tries to extract proteins for us, The proteins are then identified and the report is sent back to us."

"Which lab is that?" Morris asked.

"Medical Biologic Services in Salt Lake."

"How'd you choose them?"

"Competitive bids."

"The lab has nothing to do with InGen?" Morris asked.

"Not that I know," Grant said.

They came to the door of the trailer. Grant opened it, and felt the rush of hot air from outside. Morris paused to put on his sunglasses.

"One last thing," Morris said. "Suppose InGen wasn't really making a museum exhibit. Is there anything else they could have done with the information in the report you gave them?"