Michael Crichton: The Lost World

They were all three sitting at a small painted table in the corner of the Guadalupe Cafe, on the other side of the river. Sarah Harding drank Corona from the bottle, and watched the two men opposite her. Levine looked pleased to be with them, as if he had won some victory to be sitting at the table. Malcolm looked weary, like a parent who has spent too much time with a hyperactive child.

"You want to know what I've heard?" Levine said. "I've heard that a couple of years back, a company named InGen genetically engineered some dinosaurs and put them on an island in Costa Rica. But something went wrong, a lot of people were killed, and the dinosaurs were destroyed. And now nobody will talk about it, because of some legal angle. Nondisclosure agreements or something. And the Costa Rican government doesn't want to hurt tourism. So nobody will talk. That's what I've heard."

Malcolm stared at him. "And you believe that?"

"Not at first, I didn't," Levine said. "But the thing is, I keep hearing it. The rumors keep floating around. Supposedly you, and Alan Grant, and a bunch of other people were there."

"Did you ask Grant about it?"

"I asked him, last year, at a conference in Peking. He said it was absurd."

Malcolm nodded slowly.

"Is that what you say?" Levine asked, drinking his beer. "I mean, you know Grant, don't you?"

"No. I never met him."

Levine was watching Malcolm closely. "So it's not true?"

Malcolm sighed. "Are you familiar with the concept of a technomyth? It was developed by Geller at Princeton. Basic thesis is that we've lost all the old myths, Orpheus and Eurydice and Perseus and Medusa. So we fill the gap with modern techno-myths. Geller listed a dozen or so. One is that an alien's living at a hangar at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Another is that somebody invented a carburetor that gets a hundred and fifty miles to the gallon, but the automobile companies bought the patent and are sitting on it. Then there's the story that the Russians trained children in ESP at a secret base in Siberia and these kids can kill people anywhere in the world with their thoughts. The story that the lines in Nazca, Peru, are an alien spaceport. That the CIA released the AIDS virus to kill homosexuals. That Nikola Tesla discovers an incredible energy source but his notes are lost. That in Istanbul there's a tenth-century drawing that shows the earth from space. That the Stanford Research Institute found a guy whose body glows in the dark. Get the picture?"

"You're saying InGen's dinosaurs are a myth," Levine said.

"Of course they are. They have to be. Do you think it's possible to genetically engineer a dinosaur?"

"The experts all tell me It's not."

"And they're right," Malcolm said. He glanced at Harding, as if for confirmation. She said nothing, just drank her beer.

In fact, Harding knew something more about these dinosaur rumors. Once after surgery, Malcolm had been delirious, mumbling nonsense from the anaesthesia and pain medication. And he had been seemingly fearful, twisting in the bed, repeating the names of several kinds of dinosaurs. Harding had asked the nurse about it; she said he was like that after every operation. The hospital staff assumed it was a drug-induced fantasy - yet it seemed to Harding that Malcolm was reliving some terrifying actual experience. The feeling was heightened by the slangy, familiar way Malcolm referred to the dinosaurs: he called them "raptors" and "compys" and "trikes." And he seemed especially fearful of the raptors.

Later, when he was back home, she had asked him about his delirium. He had just shrugged it off, making a bad joke - "At least I didn't mention other women, did I?" And then he made some comment about having been a dinosaur nut as a kid, and how illness made you regress. His whole attitude was elaborately indifferent, as if it were all unimportant; she had the distinct feeling he was being evasive. But she wasn't inclined to push it; those were the days when she was in love with him, her attitude indulgent.

Now he was looking at her in a questioning way, as if to ask if she was going to contradict him. Harding just raised an eyebrow, and stared back. He must have his reasons. She could wait him out.

Levine leaned forward across the table toward Malcolm and said, "So the InGen story is entirely untrue?"

"Entirely untrue," Malcolm said, nodding gravely. "Entirely untrue."

Malcolm had been denying the speculation for three years. By now he was getting good at it; his weariness was no longer affected but genuine. In fact, he had been a consultant to International Genetic Technologies of Palo Alto in the summer of 1989, and he had made a trip to Costa Rica for them, which had turned out disastrously. In the aftermath, everyone involved had moved quickly to quash the story. InGen wanted to limit its liability. The Costa Rican government wanted to preserve its reputation as a tourist paradise. And the individual scientists had been bound by nondisclosure agreements, abetted later by generous grants to continue their silence. In Malcolm's case, two years of medical bills had been paid by the company.

Meanwhile, InGen's island facility in Costa Rica had been destroyed. There were no longer any living creatures on the island. The company had hired the eminent Stanford professor George Baselton, a biologist and essayist whose frequent television appearances had made him a popular authority on scientific subjects. Baselton claimed to have visited the island, and had been tireless in denying rumors that extinct animals had ever existed there. His derisive snort, "Saber-toothed tigers, indeed!" was particularly effective.

As time passed, interest in the story waned. InGen was long since bankrupt; the principal investors in Europe and Asia had taken their losses. Although the company's physical assets, the buildings and lab equipment, would be sold piecemeal, the core technology that had been developed would, they decided, never be sold. In short, the InGen chapter was closed.

There was nothing more to say.

"So there's no truth to it," Levine said, biting into his green-corn tamale. "To tell you the truth, Dr. Malcolm, that makes me feel better."

"Why?" Malcolm said.

"Because it means that the remnants that keep turning up in Costa Rica must be real. Real dinosaurs. I've got a friend from Yale down there, a field biologist, and he says he's seen them. I believe him."

Malcolm shrugged. "I doubt," he said, "that any more animals will turn up in Costa Rica."

"It's true there haven't been any for almost a year now. But if more show up, I'm going down there. And in the interim, I am going to outfit an expedition. I've been giving a lot of thought to how it should be done. I think the special vehicles could be built and ready in a year. I've already talked to Doc Thorne about it. Then I'll assemble a team, perhaps including Dr. Harding here, or a similarly accomplished naturalist, and some graduate students…"

Malcolm listened, shaking his head.

"You think I'm wasting my time," Levine said. "I do, yes."

"But suppose - just suppose - that animals start to show up again."

"Never happen."

"But suppose they did?" Levine said. "Would you be interested in helping me? To plan an expedition?"

Malcolm finished his meal, and pushed the plate aside. He stared at Levine.

"Yes," he said finally. "If animals started showing up again, I would be interested in helping you."

"Great!" Levine said. "That's all I wanted to know."

Outside, in the bright sunlight on Guadalupe Street, Malcolm walked with Sarah toward Malcolm's battered Ford sedan. Levine climbed into a bright-red Ferrari, waved cheerfully, and roared off.

"You think it will ever happen?" Sarah Harding said. "That these, ah, animals will start showing up again?"