Jurassic Park: A Novel Read Free Page A

ready, doctor. I think one hour more, perhaps two.”
    Bobbie looked at the stars, and listened to the peaceful lapping of the surf at the shore. In the darkness she saw the shadows of the fishing boats anchored offshore. The whole scene was quiet, so normal, she felt foolish to be talking of vampires and kidnapped babies.
    Bobbie went back to her room, remembering again that Manuel had insisted it was not a Spanish word. Out of curiosity, she looked in the little English dictionary, and to her surprise she found the word there, too:
    raptor \
n
[deriv. of L.
raptor
plunderer, fr.
raptus
]: bird of prey.

FIRST ITERATION

    “
At the earliest drawings of the fractal curve, few clues to the underlying mathematical structure will be seen.
”
    IAN MALCOLM

ALMOST PARADISE
    Mike Bowman whistled cheerfully as he drove the Land Rover through the Cabo Blanco Biological Reserve, on the west coast of Costa Rica. It was a beautiful morning in July, and the road before him was spectacular: hugging the edge of a cliff, overlooking the jungle and the blue Pacific. According to the guidebooks, Cabo Blanco was unspoiled wilderness, almost a paradise. Seeing it now made Bowman feel as if the vacation was back on track.
    Bowman, a thirty-six-year-old real estate developer from Dallas, had come to Costa Rica with his wife and daughter for a two-week holiday. The trip had actually been his wife’s idea; for weeks Ellen had filled his ear about the wonderful national parks of Costa Rica, and how good it would be for Tina to see them. Then, when they arrived, it turned out Ellen had an appointment to see a plastic surgeon in San José. That was the first Mike Bowman had heard about the excellent and inexpensive plastic surgery available in Costa Rica, and all the luxurious private clinics in San José.
    Of course they’d had a huge fight. Mike felt she’d lied to him, and she had. And he put his foot down about this plastic surgery business. Anyway, it was ridiculous, Ellen was only thirty, and she was a beautiful woman. Hell, she’d been Homecoming Queen her senior year at Rice, and that was not even ten years earlier. But Ellen tended to be insecure, and worried. And it seemed as if in recent years she had mostly worried about losing her looks.
    That, and everything else.
    The Land Rover bounced in a pothole, splashing mud. Seated beside him, Ellen said, “Mike, are you sure this is the right road? We haven’t seen any other people for hours.”
    “There was another car fifteen minutes ago,” he reminded her. “Remember, the blue one?”
    “Going the other way …”
    “Darling, you wanted a deserted beach,” he said, “and that’s what you’re going to get.”
    Ellen shook her head doubtfully. “I hope you’re right.”
    “Yeah, Dad, I hope you’re right,” said Christina, from the backseat. She was eight years old.
    “Trust me, I’m right.” He drove in silence a moment. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Look at that view. It’s beautiful.”
    “It’s okay,” Tina said.
    Ellen got out a compact and looked at herself in the mirror, pressing under her eyes. She sighed, and put the compact away.
    The road began to descend, and Mike Bowman concentrated on driving. Suddenly a small black shape flashed across the road and Tina shrieked, “Look!
Look!
” Then it was gone, into the jungle.
    “What was it?” Ellen asked. “A monkey?”
    “Maybe a squirrel monkey,” Bowman said.
    “Can I count it?” Tina said, taking her pencil out. She was keeping a list of all the animals she had seen on her trip, as a project for school.
    “I don’t know,” Mike said doubtfully.
    Tina consulted the pictures in the guidebook. “I don’t think it was a squirrel monkey,” she said. “I think it was just another howler.” They had seen several howler monkeys already on their trip.
    “Hey,” she said, more brightly. “According to this book, ‘the beaches of Cabo Blanco are frequented by a variety of wildlife, including