Jurassic Park - Crichton Michael - Страница 67

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He started for the steps. They were damp and slippery with mold, and he went down carefully. Partway down the stairs, he heard a sniffing and the sound of claws scratching on concrete. He took out his dart pistol, and proceeded cautiously.

The steps bent around the corner, and as he shone his light, an odd reflection glinted back, and then, a moment later, he saw it: a car! It was an electric car, like a golf cart, and it faced a long tunnel that seemed to stretch away for miles. A bright red light glowed by the steering wheel of the car, so perhaps it was charged.

Grant heard the sniffing again, and he wheeled and saw a pale shape rise up toward him, leaping through the air, its laws open, and without thinking Grant fired. The animal landed on him, knocking him down, and he rolled away in fright, his flashlight swinging wildly. But the animal didn't get up, and he felt foolish when he saw it.

It was a velociraptor, but very young, less than a year old. It was about two feet tall, the size of a medium dog, and it lay on the ground, breathing shallowly, the dart sticking from beneath its jaw. There was probably too much anesthetic for its body weight, and Grant pulled the dart out quickly. The velociraptor looked at him with slightly glazed eyes.

Grant had a clear feeling of intelligence from this creature, a kind of softness which contrasted strangely with the menace he had felt from the adults in the pen. He stroked the head of the velociraptor, hoping to calm it. He looked down at the body, which was shivering slightly as the tranquilizer took hold. And then he saw it was a male.

A young juvenile, and a male. There was no question what he was seeing. This velociraptor had been bred in the wild.

Excited by this development, he hurried back up the stairs to the door. With his flashlight, he scanned the flat, featureless surface of the door, and the interior walls. As he ran his hands over the door, it slowly dawned on him that he was locked inside, and unable to open it, unless the kids had the presence of mind to open it for him. He could hear them, faintly, on the other side of the door.

"Dr. Grant!" Lex shouted, pounding the door. "Dr. Grant!"

"Take it easy," Tim said. "He'll be back."

"But where did he go?"

"Listen, Dr. Grant knows what he's doing," Tim said. "He'll be back in a minute."

"He should come back now, " Lex said. She bunched her fists on her hips, pushed her elbows wide. She stamped her foot angrily.

And then, with a roar, the tyrannosaur's head burst through the waterfall toward them.

Tim stared in horror as the big mouth gaped wide. Lex shrieked and threw herself on the ground. The head swung back and forth, and pulled out again. But Tim could see the shadow of the animal's head on the sheet of falling water.

He pulled Lex deeper into the recess, just as the jaws burst through again, roaring, the thick tongue flicking in and out rapidly. Water sprayed in all directions from the head. Then it pulled out again.

Lex huddled next to Tim, shivering. "I hate him," she said. She huddled back, but the recess was only a few feet deep, and crammed with machinery. There wasn't any place for them to hide.

The head came through the water again, but slowly this time, and the jaw came to rest on the ground. The tyrannosaur snorted, flaring its nostrils, breathing the air. But the eyes were still outside the sheet of water.

Tim thought: He can't see us. He knows we're in here, but he can't see through the water.

The tyrannosaur sniffed.

"What is he doing?" Lex said again.

"Sshhbh."

With a low growl, the jaws slowly opened, and the tongue snaked out. It was thick and blue-black, with a little forked indentation at the tip. It was four feet long, and easily reached back to the far wall of the recess. The tongue slid with a rasping scrape over the filter cylinders. Tim and Lex pressed back against the pipes.

The tongue moved slowly to the left, then to the right, slapping wetly against the machinery. The tip curled around the pipes and valves, sensing them. Tim saw that the tongue had muscular movements, like an elephant's trunk, The tongue drew back along the right side of the recess. It dragged against Lex's legs.

"Eeww," Lex said.

The tongue stopped. It curled, then began to rise like a snake up the side of her body-

"Don't move, " Tim whispered.

… past her face, then up along Tim's shoulder, and finally wrapping around his head. Tim squeezed his eyes shut as the slimy muscle covered his face. It was hot and wet and it stunk like urine.

Wrapped around him, the tongue began to drag him, very slowly, toward the open laws.

"Timmy…"

Tim couldn't answer; his mouth was covered by the flat black tongue. He could see, but he couldn't talk. Lex tugged at his hand.

"Come on, Timmy!"

The tongue dragged him toward the snorting mouth. He felt the hot panting breath on his legs. Lex was tugging at him but she was no match for the muscular power that held him. Tim let go of her and pressed the tongue with both hands, trying to shove it over his head. He couldn't move it. He dug his heels into the muddy ground but he was dragged forward anyway.

Lex had wrapped her arms around his waist and was pulling backward, shouting to him, but he was powerless to do anything. He was beginning to see stars. A kind of peacefulness overcame him, a sense of peaceful inevitability as he was dragged along.

Timmy?"

And then suddenly the tongue relaxed, and uncoiled. Tim felt it slipping off his face. His body was covered in disgusting white foamy slime, and the tongue fell limply to the ground. The jaws slapped shut, biting down on the tongue. Dark blood gushed out, mixing with the mud. The nostrils still snorted in ragged breaths.

"What's he doing?" Lex cried.

And then slowly, very slowly, the head began to slide backward, out of the recess, leaving a long scrape in the mud. And finally it disappeared entirely, and they could see only the silver sheet of falling water.

"Okay," Arnold said, in the control room. "The rex is down." He pushed back in his chair, and grinned as he lit a final cigarette and crumpled the pack. That did it: the final step in putting the park back in order. Now all they had to do was go out and move it.

"Son of a bitch," Muldoon said, looking at the monitor. "I got him after all." He turned to Gennaro. "It just took him an hour to feel it."

Henry Wu frowned at the screen. "But he could drown, in that position…"

"He won't drown," Muldoon said. "Never seen an animal that was harder to kill."

"I think we have to go out and move him," Arnold said,

"We will," Muldoon said. He didn't sound enthusiastic.

"That's a valuable animal."

"I know it's a valuable animal," Muldoon said.

Arnold turned to Gennaro. He couldn't resist a moment of triumph. "I'd point out to you," he said, "that the park is now completely back to normal. Whatever Malcolm's mathematical model said was going to happen. We are completely under control again."

Gennaro pointed to the screen behind Arnold's head and said, "What's that?"

Arnold turned. It was the system status box, in the upper corner of the screen. Ordinarily it was empty. Arnold was surprised to see that it was now blinking yellow: AUX PWR LOW. For a moment, he didn't understand. Why should auxiliary power be low? They were running on main power, not auxiliary power. He thought perhaps it was just a routine status check on the auxiliary power, perhaps a check on the fuel tank levels or the battery charge…

"Henry," Arnold said to Wu. "Look at this."

Wu said, "Why are you running on auxiliary power?"

"I'm not," Arnold said.

"It looks like you are."

"I can't be."

"Print the system status log," Wu said. The log was a record of the system over the last few hours.

Arnold pressed a button, and they heard the hum of a printer in the corner. Wu walked over to it.

Arnold stared at the screen. The box now turned from flashing yellow to red, and the message now read: AUX PWR FAIL, Numbers began to count backward from twenty.

"What the hell is going on?" Arnold said.

Cautiously, Tim moved a few yards out along the muddy path, into the sunshine. He peered around the waterfall, and saw the tyrannosaur lying on its side, floating in the pool of water below.

"I hope he's dead," Lex said.

Tim could see he wasn't: the dinosaur's chest was still moving, and one forearm twitched in spasms. But something was wrong with him. Then Tim saw the white canister sticking in the back of the head, by the indentation of the ear.

"He's been shot with a dart," Tim said.

"Good," Lex said. "He practically ate us."

Tim watched the labored breathing. He felt unexpectedly distressed to see the huge animal humbled like this. He didn't want it to die. "It's not his fault," he said.

"Oh sure," Lex said. "He practically ate us and it's not his fault."

"He's a carnivore. He was just doing what he does."

"You wouldn't say that," Lex said, "if you were in his stomach right now.

Then the sound of the waterfall changed. From a deafening roar, it became softer, quieter. The thundering sheet of water thinned, became a trickle…

And stopped.

"Timmy. The waterfall stopped," Lex said.

It was now just dripping like a tap that wasn't completely turned off. The pool at the base of the waterfall was still. They stood near the top, in the cave-like indentation filled with machinery, looking down.

"Waterfalls aren't supposed to stop," Lex said.

Tim shook his head. "It must be the power… Somebody turned off the power." Behind them, all the pumps and filters were shutting down one after another, the lights blinking off, and the machinery becoming quiet.

And then there was the thunk of a solenoid releasing, and the door marked MAINT 04 swung slowly open.

Grant stepped out, blinking in the light, and said, "Good work, kids. You got the door open."

"We didn't do anything," Lex said.

"The power went out," Tim said.

"Never mind that," Grant said. "Come and see what I've found."

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