Locked.
The velociraptor roared. Tim and Lex stepped back from the door as the dinosaur slammed into it again. With each impact, the heavy steel wall hinges creaked, but they held. Tim didn't think the animal could possibly open the door.
The raptor was locked in.
He gave a long sigh. "Let's go," he said.
He took her hand, and they ran.
"You should have seen them," Gennaro said, as Grant led him back out of the maintenance building. "There must have been two dozen of them. Compys. I had to crawl into the truck to get away from them. They were all over the windshield. Just squatting there, waiting like buzzards. But they ran away when you came over."
"Scavengers," Grant said. "They won't attack anything that's moving or looks strong. They attack things that are dead, or almost dead. Anyway, unmoving."
They were going up the ladder now, back toward the entrance door.
"What happened to the raptor that attacked you?" Grant said.
"I don't know," Gennaro said.
"Did it leave?"
"I didn't see. I got away, I think because it was injured. I think Muldoon shot it in the leg and it was bleeding while it was in here. Then… I don't know. Maybe it went back outside. Maybe it died in here. I didn't see."
"And maybe it's still in here," Grant said.
Wu stared out the lodge window at the raptors beyond the fence. They still seemed playful, making mock attacks at Ellie. The behavior had continued for a long time now, and it occurred to him that it might be too long. It almost seemed as if they were trying to keep Ellie's attention, in the same way that she was trying to keep theirs.
The behavior of the dinosaurs had always been a minor consideration for Wu. And rightly so: behavior was a second-order effect of DNA, like protein enfolding. You couldn't really predict behavior, and you couldn't really control it, except in very crude ways, like making an animal dependent on a dietary substance by withholding an enzyme. But, in general, behavioral effects were simply beyond the reach of understanding. You couldn't look at a DNA sequence and predict behavior. It was impossible.
And that had made Wu's DNA work purely empirical. It was a matter of tinkering, the way a modern workman might repair an antique grandfather clock. You were dealing with something out of the past, something constructed of ancient materials and following ancient rules. You couldn't be certain why it worked as it did, and it had been repaired and modified many times already, by forces of evolution, over eons of time. So, like the workman who makes an adjustment and then sees if the clock runs any better, Wu would make an adjustment and then see if the animals behaved any better. And he only tried to correct gross behavior: uncontrolled butting of the electrical fences, or rubbing the skin raw on tree trunks. Those were the behaviors that sent him back to the drawing board.
And the limits of his science had left him with a mysterious feeling about the dinosaurs in the park. He was never sure, never really sure at all, whether the behavior of the animals was historically accurate or not. Were they behaving as they really had in the past? It was an open question, ultimately unanswerable.
And though Wu would never admit it, the discovery that the dinosaurs were breeding represented a tremendous validation of his work. A breeding animal was demonstrably effective in a fundamental way; it implied that Wu had put all the pieces together correctly. He had re-created an animal millions of years old, with such precision that the creature could even reproduce itself.
But, still, looking at the raptors outside, he was troubled by the persistence of their behavior. Raptors were intelligent, and intelligent animals got bored quickly. Intelligent animals also formed plans, and-
Harding came out into the hallway from Malcolm's room. "Where's Ellie?"
"Still outside."
"Better get her in. The raptors have left the skylight."
"When?" Wu said, moving to the door.
"Just a moment ago," Harding said.
Wu threw open the front door. "Ellie! Inside, now!"
She looked over at him, puzzled. "There's no problem, everything's under control…"
"Now!"
She shook her head. "I know what I'm doing," she said.
"Now, Ellie, damn it!"
Muldoon didn't like Wu standing there with the door open, and he was about to say so, when he saw a shadow descend from above, and he realized at once what had happened. Wu was yanked bodily out the door, and Muldoon heard Ellie screaming. Muldoon got to the door and looked out and saw that Wu was lying on his back, his body already torn open by the big claw, and the raptor was jerking its head, tugging at Wu's intestines even though Wu was still alive, still feebly reaching up with his hands to push the big head away, he was being eaten while he was still alive, and then Ellie stopped screaming and started to run along the inside of the fence, and Muldoon slammed the door shut, dizzy with horror. It had happened so fast!
Harding said, "He jumped down from the roof?"
Muldoon nodded. He went to the window and looked out, and he saw that the three raptors outside the fence were now running away. But they weren't following Ellie.
They were going back, toward the visitor center.
Grant came to the edge of the maintenance building and peered forward, in the fog. He could hear the snarls of the raptors, and they seemed to be coming closer. Now he could see their bodies running past him. They were going to the visitor center.
He looked back at Gennaro.
Gennaro shook his head, no.
Grant leaned close and whispered in his ear. "No choice. We've got to turn on the computer."
Grant set out in the fog.
After a moment, Gennaro followed.
Ellie didn't stop to think. When the raptors dropped inside the fence to attack Wu, she just turned and ran, as fast as she could, toward the far end of the lodge. There was a space fifteen feet wide between the fence and the lodge. She ran, not hearing the animals pursuing her, just hearing her own breath. She rounded the corner, saw a tree growing by the side of the building, and leapt, grabbing a branch, swinging up. She didn't feel panic. She felt a kind of exhilaration as she kicked and saw her legs rise up In front of her face, and she hooked her legs over a branch farther up, tightened her gut, and pulled up quickly.
She was already twelve feet off the ground, and the raptors still weren't following her, and she was beginning to feel pretty good, when she saw the first animal at the base of the tree. Its mouth was bloody, and bits of stringy flesh hung from its jaws. She continued to go up fast, hand over hand, just reaching and going, and she could almost see the top of the building. She looked down again.
The two raptors were climbing the tree.
Now she was at the level of the rooftop, she could see the gravel only four feet away, and the glass pyramids of the skylights, sticking up in the mist. There was a door on the roof; she could get inside. In a single heaving effort she flung herself through the air, and landed sprawling on the gravel. She scraped her face, but somehow the only sensation was exhilaration, as if it were a kind of game she was playing, a game she intended to win. She ran for the door that led to the stairwell. Behind her, she could hear the raptors shaking the branches of the tree. They were still in the tree.
She reached the door, and twisted the knob. The door was locked.
It took a moment for the meaning of that to cut through her euphoria. The door was locked. She was on the roof and she couldn't get down. The door was locked.
She pounded on the door in frustration, and then she ran for the far side of the roof, hoping to see a way down, but there was only the green outline of the swimming pool through the blowing mist. All around the pool was concrete decking. Ten, twelve feet of concrete. Too much for her to jump across. No other trees to climb down. No stairs. No fire escape.
Nothing.
Ellie turned back, and saw the raptors jumping easily to the roof. She ran to the far end of the building, hoping there might be another door there, but there wasn't.
The raptors came slowly toward her, stalking her, slipping silently among the glass pyramids. She looked down. The edge of the pool was ten feet away.
Too far.
The raptors were closer, starting to move apart, and illogically she thought: Isn't this always the way? Some little mistake screws it all up. She still felt giddy, still felt exhilaration, and she somehow couldn't believe these animals were going to get her, she couldn't believe that now her life was going to end like this. It didn't seem possible. She was enveloped in a kind of protective cheerfulness. She just didn't believe it would happen.