Jurassic Park: A Novel by Michael Crichton Read Free Book Online Page B

we had. And he offered a very large fee. Fifty thousand dollars.”
    Morris took out a tape recorder and set it on the endtable. “You mind?”
    “No, go ahead.”
    “So Gennaro telephoned you in 1984. What happened then?”
    “Well,” Grant said. “You see our operation here. Fifty thousand would support two full summers of digging. I told him I’d do what I could.”
    “So you agreed to prepare a paper for him.”
    “Yes.”
    “On the dietary habits of juvenile dinosaurs?”
    “Yes.”
    “You met Gennaro?”
    “No. Just on the phone.”
    “Did Gennaro say why he wanted this information?”
    “Yes,” Grant said. “He was planning a museum for children, and he wanted to feature baby dinosaurs. He said he was hiring a number of academic consultants, and named them. There were paleontologists like me, and a mathematician from Texas named Ian Malcolm, and a couple of ecologists. A systems analyst. Good group.”
    Morris nodded, making notes. “So you accepted the consultancy?”
    “Yes. I agreed to send him a summary of our work: what we knew about the habits of the duckbilled hadrosaurs we’d found.”
    “What kind of information did you send?” Morris asked.
    “Everything: nesting behavior, territorial ranges, feeding behavior, social behavior. Everything.”
    “And how did Gennaro respond?”
    “He kept calling and calling. Sometimes in the middle of the night. Would the dinosaurs eat this? Would they eat that? Should the exhibit include this? I could never understand why he was so worked up. I mean, I think dinosaurs are important, too, but not
that
important. They’ve been dead sixty-five million years. You’d think his calls could wait until morning.”
    “I see,” Morris said. “And the fifty thousand dollars?”
    Grant shook his head. “I got tired of Gennaro and called the whole thing off. We settled up for twelve thousand. That must have been about the middle of ’85.”
    Morris made a note. “And InGen? Any other contact with them?”
    “Not since 1985.”
    “And when did the Hammond Foundation begin to fund your research?”
    “I’d have to look,” Grant said. “But it was around then. Mid-eighties.”
    “And you know Hammond as just a rich dinosaur enthusiast.”
    “Yes.”
    Morris made another note.
    “Look,” Grant said. “If the EPA is so concerned about John Hammond and what he’s doing—the dinosaur sites in the north, the amber purchases, the island in Costa Rica—why don’t you just ask him about it?”
    “At the moment, we can’t,” Morris said.
    “Why not?” Grant said.
    “Because we don’t have any evidence of wrongdoing,” Morris said. “But personally, I think it’s clear John Hammond is evading the law.”
    “I was first contacted,” Morris explained, “by the Office of Technology Transfer. The OTT monitors shipments of American technology which might have military significance. They called to say that InGen had two areas of possible illegal technology transfer. First, InGen shipped three Cray XMPs to Costa Rica. InGen characterized it as a transfer within corporate divisions, and said they weren’t for resale. But OTT couldn’t imagine why the hell somebody’d need that power in Costa Rica.”
    “Three Crays,” Grant said. “Is that a kind of computer?”
    Morris nodded. “Very powerful supercomputers. To put it in perspective, three Crays represent more computing power than any other privately held company in America. And InGen sent the machines to Costa Rica. You have to wonder why.”
    “I give up. Why?” Grant said.
    “Nobody knows. And the Hoods are even more worrisome,” Morris continued. “Hoods are automated gene sequencers—machines that work out the genetic code by themselves. They’re so new that they haven’t been put on the restricted lists yet. But any genetic engineering lab is likely to have one, if it can afford the half-million-dollar price tag.” He flipped through his notes. “Well, it seems InGen