Michael Crichton - The Lost World

careful

Kelly said, "What's Site B? He has notes about it."

Thorne came over to look. "Vulkanische," he said. "That means volcanic,' I think. And Tacano and Nublar…They sound like place names. If they are, we can check that on an atlas…"

"And what's this about one of five deaths?" Kelly said.

"Damned if I know," he said.

They were staring at the paper when Arby walked into the bedroom and said, "What's Site B?"

Thorne looked up. "Why?"

"You better see his office," Arby said.

Levine had turned the second bedroom into an office. It was, like the rest of the apartment, admirably treat. There was a desk with papers laid out in tidy stacks alongside a computer, covered in plastic. But behind the desk there was a large corkboard that covered most of the wall. And on this board, Levine had tacked up maps, charts, newspaper clippings, Landsat images, and aerial photographs. At the top of the board was a large sign that said "Site B?"

Alongside that was a blurred, curling snapshot of a bespectacled Chinese man in a white lab coat, standing in the jungle beside a wooden sign that said "Site B." His coat was unbuttoned, and he was wearing a tee shirt with lettering on it.

Alongside the photo was a large blowup of the tee shirt, as seen in the original photograph. It was hard to read the lettering, which was partly covered on both sides by the lab coat, but the shirt seemed to say:

nGen Site B

esearch Facili

In neat handwriting, Levine had noted: "InGen Site B Research Facility???? WHERE???"

Just below that was a page cut from the InGen Annual Report. A circled paragraph read:

In addition to its headquarters in Palo Alto, where InGen maintains an ultra-modern 200,000 square foot research laboratory, the company runs three field laboratories around the world. A geological lab in South Africa, where amber and other biological specimens are acquired; a research farm in the mountains of Costa Rica, where exotic varieties of plants are grown; and a facility on the island of Isla Nublar, 120 miles west of Costa Rica.

Next to that Levine had written: "No B! Liars!"

Arby said, "He's really obsessed with Site B."

"I'll say," Thorne said. "And he thinks it's on an island somewhere."

Peering closely at the board, Thorne looked at the satellite images. He noticed that although they were printed in false colors, at various degrees of magnification, they all seemed to show the same general geographical area: a rocky coastline, and some islands offshore. The coastline had a beach, and encroaching jungle; it might be Costa Rica, but it was impossible to say for sure. In truth, it could be any of a dozen places in the world.

"He said he was on an island," Kelly said.

"Yes." Thorne shrugged. "But that doesn't help us much." He stared at the board. "There must be twenty islands here, maybe more."

Thorne looked at a memo, near the bottom.

SITE B @#$#TO ALL DEPARTMENTS OF[]****

MINDER OF%$#@#!PRESS AVOIDAN*****

Mr. Hammond wishes to remind all****after^* amp;^marketing

*%**Long-term marketing plan* amp;^ amp;^%

Marketing of proposed resort facilities requires that full com-

plexity of JP technology not be revealed announced made

known. Mr, Hammond wishes to remind all departments that

Production facility will not be topic subject of any press release

or discussion at any time.

Production/manufacturing facility cannot be#@#$#

reference to production island loc

Isla S. inhouse reference only

strict press****^'%$**guidelines

"This is weird," he said. What do you make of this?"

Arby came over, and looked at it thoughtfully.

"All these missing letters and garbage," Thorne said. "Does it make any sense to you?"

"Yes," Arby said. He snapped his fingers, and went directly to Levine's desk. There, he pulled the plastic cover off the computer, and said, "I thought so."

The computer on Levine's desk was not the modern machine that Thorne would have expected. This computer was several years old, large and bulky, its cover scratched in many places. It had a black stripe on the box that said "Design Associates, Inc." And lower down, right by the power switch, a shiny little metal tag that said "Property International Genetics Technology, Inc., Palo Alto, CA."

"What's this?" Thorne said. "Levine has an InGen computer?"

"Yes," Arby said. "He sent us to buy it last week. They were selling off computer equipment."

"And he sent you?" Thorne said.

"Yeah. Me and Kelly. He didn't want to go himself. He's afraid of being followed."

"But this thing's a CAD-CAM machine, and it must be five years old," Thorne said. CAD-CAM computers were used by architects, graphic artists, and mechanical engineers. "Why would Levine want it?"

"He never told us," Arby said, flipping on the power switch. "But I know now."

"Yes?"

"That memo," Arby said, nodding to the wall. "You know why it looks that way? It's a recovered computer file. Levine's been recovering InGen files from this machine."

As Arby explained it, all the computers that InGen sold that day had had their hard drives reformatted to destroy any sensitive data on the disks. But the CAD-CAM machines were an exception. These machines all had special software installed by the manufacturer. The software was keyed to individual machines, using individual code references. That made these computers awkward to reformat, because the software would have to be reinstalled individually, taking hours.

"So they didn't do it," Thorne said. "Right," Arby said. "They just erased the directory, and sold them."

"And that means the original files are still on the disk."

"Right."

The monitor glowed. The screen said:

TOTAL RECOVERED FILES: 2,387

"Jeez," Arby said. He leaned forward, staring intently, fingers poised over the keys. He pushed the directory button, and row after row of file names scrolled down, Thousands of files in all.

Thorne said "How are you going to - "

"Give me a minute here," Arby said, interrupting him. Then he began to type rapidly.

Okay, Arb," Thorne said. He was amused by the imperious way Arby behaved whenever he was working with a computer. He seemed to forget how young he was, his usual diffidence and timidity vanished. The electronic world was really his element. And he knew he was good at it.

Thorne said, "Any help you can give us will be - "

"Doc," Arby said. "Come on. Go and, uh, I don't know. Help Kelly or something."

And he turned away, and typed.

The velociraptor was six feet tall and dark green. Poised to attack, it hissed loudly, its muscular neck thrust forward, jaws wide. Tim, one of the modelers, said, "What do you think, Dr. Malcolm?"

"No menace," Malcolm said, walking by. He was in the back win of the biology department, on his way to his office.

"No menace?" Tim said.

"They never stand like this, flatfooted on two feet. Give him a book" - he grabbed a notebook from a desk, and placed it in the forearms of the animal - "and he might be singing a Christmas carol."

"Gee," Tim said. "I didn't think it was that bad."

"Bad?" Malcolm said. "This is an insult to a great predator. We should feel his speed and menace and power. Widen the jaws. Get the neck down. Tense the muscles, tighten the skin. And get that leg up. Remember, raptors don't attack with their jaws - they use their toe-claws," Malcolm said. "I want to see the claw raised up, ready to slash down and tear the guts out of its prey."

"You really think so?" Tim said doubtfully. "It might scare little kids…"

"You mean it might scare you." Malcolm continued down the hallway. "And another thing: change that hissing sound. It sounds like somebody taking a pee. Give this animal a snarl. Give a great predator his due."