Michael Crichton - Jurassic Park

Tim shook his head. He didn't understand what Grant was talking about. "My mom said it was just a resort, you know, with swimming and tennis."

"Not exactly," Grant said. "I'll explain as we walk along."

Now I'm a damned babysitter, Ed Regis thought unhappily, tapping his foot as he waited in the visitor center. That was what the old man had told him him: You watch my kids like a hawk, they're your responsibility for the weekend.

Ed Regis didn't like it at all. He felt degraded. He wasn't a damn babysitter. And, for that matter, he wasn't a damned tour guide, even for VIPs. He was the head of public relations for Jurassic Park, and he had much to prepare between now and the opening, a year away. Just to coordinate with the PR firms in San Francisco and London, and the agencies in New York and Tokyo, was a full-time job-especially since the agencies couldn't yet be told what the resort's real attraction was. The firms were all designing teaser campaigns, nothing specific, and they were unhappy. Creative people needed nurturing. They needed encouragement to do their best work. He couldn't waste his time taking scientists on tours.

But that was the trouble with a career in public relations-nobody saw you as a professional. Regis had been down here on the island off and on for the past seven months, and they were still pushing odd jobs on him. Like that episode back in January. Harding should have handled that. Harding, or Owens, the general contractor. Instead, it had fallen to Ed Regis. What did he know about taking care of some sick workman? And now he was a damn tour guide and babysitter. He turned back and counted the heads. Still one short.

Then, in the back, he saw Dr. Sattler emerge from the bathroom. "All right, folks, let's begin our tour on the second floor."

Tim went with the others, following Mr. Regis up the black suspended staircase to the second floor of the building. They passed a sign that read:

CLOSED AREA

AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY

BEYOND THIS POINT

Tim felt a thrill when he saw that sign. They walked down the secondfloor hallway. One wall was glass, looking out onto a balcony with palm trees in the light mist. On the other wall were stenciled doors, like offices: PARK WARDEN… GUEST SERVICES… GENERAL MANAGER…

Halfway down the corridor they came to a glass partition marked with another sign:

[picture]

Underneath were more signs:

CAUTION

Teratogenic Substances

Pregnant Women Avoid Exposure

To This Area

DANGER

Radioactive Isotopes In Use

Carcinogenic Potential

Tim grew more excited all the time. Teratogenic substances! Things that made monsters! It gave him a thrill, and he was disappointed to hear Ed Regis say, "Never mind the signs, they're just up for legal reasons. I can assure you everything is perfectly safe." He led them through the door. There was a guard on the other side. Ed Regis turned to the group.

"You may have noticed that we have a minimum of personnel on the island. We can run this resort with a total of twenty people. Of course, we'll have more when we have guests here, but at the moment there's only twenty. Here's our control room. The entire park is controlled from here."

They paused before windows and peered into a darkened room that looked like a small version of Mission Control. There was a vertical glass see-through map of the park, and facing it a bank of glowing computer consoles- Some of the screens displayed data, but most of them showed video images from around the park. There were just two people inside, standing and talking.

"The man on the left is our chief engineer, John Arnold"-Regis pointed to a thin man in a button-down short-sleeve shirt and tie, smoking a cigarette-"and next to him, our park warden, Mr. Robert Muldoon, the famous white bunter from Nairobi." Muldoon was a burly man in khaki, sunglasses dangling from his shirt pockct. He glanced out at the group, gave a brief nod, and turned back to the computer screens. "I'm sure you want to see this room," Ed Regis said, "but first, let's see how we obtain dinosaur DNA."

The sign on the door said EXTRACTIONS and, like all the doors in the laboratory building, it opened with a security card. Ed Regis slipped the card in the slot; the light blinked; and the door opened.

Inside, Tim saw a small room bathed in green light. Four technicians in lab coats were peering into double-barreled stereo microscopes, or looking at images on high resolution video screens. The room was filled with yellow stones. The stones were in glass shelves; in cardboard boxes; in large pull-out trays. Each stone was tagged and numbered in black ink.

Regis introduced Henry Wu, a slender man in his thirties. "Dr. Wu is our chief geneticist. I'll let him explain what we do here."

Henry Wu smiled. "At least I'll try," he said. "Genetics is a bit complicated. But you're probably wondering where our dinosaur DNA comes from."

"It crossed my mind," Grant said.

"As a matter of fact," Wu said, "there are two possible sources. Using the Loy antibody extraction technique, we can sometimes get DNA directly from dinosaur bones."

"What kind of a yield?" Grant asked.

"Well, most soluble protein is leached out during fossilization, but twenty percent of the proteins are still recoverable by grinding up the bones and using Loy's procedure. Dr. Loy himself has used it to obtain proteins from extinct Australian marsupials, as well as blood cells from ancient human remains. His technique is so refined it can work with a mere fifty nanograms of material. That's fifty-billionths of a gram."

"And you've adapted his technique here?" Grant asked.

"Only as a backup," Wu said. "As you can imagine, a twenty percent yield is insufficient for our work. We need the entire dinosaur DNA strand in order to clone. And we get it here." He held up one of the yellow stones. "From amber-the fossilized resin of prehistoric tree sap."

Grant looked at Ellie, then at Malcolm.

"That's really quite clever," Malcolm said, nodding.

"I still don't understand," Grant admitted.

"Tree sap," Wu explained, "often flows over insects and traps them. The insects are then perfectly preserved within the fossil. One finds all kinds of insects in amber-including biting insects that have sucked blood from larger animals."

"Sucked the blood," Grant repeated. His mouth fell open. "You mean sucked the blood of dinosaurs.

"Hopefully, yes."

"And then the insects are preserved in amber…" Grant shook his head. "I'll be damned-that just might work."

"I assure you, it does work," Wu said. He moved to one of the microscopes, where a technician positioned a piece of amber containing a fly under the microscope. On the video monitor, they watched as he inserted a long needle through the amber, into the thorax of the prehistoric fly.

"If this insect has any foreign blood cells, we may be able to extract them, and obtain paleo-DNA, the DNA of an extinct creature. We won't know for sure, of course, until we extract whatever is in there, replicate it, and test it. That is what we have been doing for five years now. It has been a long, slow process-but it has paid off.

"Actually, dinosaur DNA is somewhat easier to extract by this process than mammalian DNA. The reason is that mammalian red cells have no nuclei, and thus no DNA in their red cells. To clone a mammal, you must find a white cell, which is much rarer than red cells. But dinosaurs had nucleated red cells, as do modern birds. It is one of the many indications we have that dinosaurs aren't really reptiles at all. They are big leathery birds."

Tim saw that Dr. Grant still looked skeptical, and Dennis Nedry, the messy fat man, appeared completely uninterested, as if he knew it all already. Nedry kept looking impatiently toward the next room.