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Jurassic Park Aftermath-Chapter 9
By Texasraptor
I’m embarrassed to say I haven’t thanked my awesome editor in a few chapters. Thanks Yvonne!
*~*~*~*~*
"Alan, before you leave, can you take a look at my hands?" Tim asked.
"Sure, Tim,” he said, as he checked his watch; a few minutes remained until Joe would arrive.
While Tim tore off his old bandages, Alan switched on the overhead light and took a seat at the dinner table.
"How do they look? Can I go swimming?" Tim asked.
Alan studied Tim's hands, and after a few moments, he decided the boy could swim. "Ellie, what do you think?"
Ellie caught Alan's wink, and she guessed his plan. She leaned over his shoulder, and peered at Tim's hands. "Hmm—well Tim, I don't know."
"They don't hurt at all. Please, can I swim?" Tim begged, as he looked eagerly between the adults.
Ellie could tell only a slight redness remained from his wounds. Luckily, she did not think they would scar. “Don't worry Tim, we're kidding you. If Alan agrees, I think you’re good to go."
Alan decided to take a conservative approach. "How about this? You can swim for an hour or so the first time. If there are no problems afterwards, you can swim longer next time.”
The children let out a whoop, which made him smile. Such innocent enthusiasm, he reflected; how sad that as people grew older, they lost the capacity to enjoy life’s simple pleasures.
“Can Mr. Reiling take us swimming?” Lex asked.
“I'm sure he will. We'll ask him when he gets here,” Ellie said.
“Excellent,” Tim said. “Come on, Lex. Let’s work on the puzzle until Mr. Reiling comes.”
“Sounds good to me,” she said.
“Alan, I’m going to give Mom a call and let her know about the transfer,” Ellie said.
“Okay, I’ll be outside,” Alan said, nodding. As he walked through the patio door; by habit, he checked the sky. Cloudy, warm, and muggy, it looked like it might rain later. In the field, using the local radio stations, he and Ben kept close tabs on the forecast. The heat was a constant concern, and although infrequent, plains thunderstorms formed quickly, and could be violent, with high winds and dangerous lightning.
As he read the newspaper, he realized in two days, it would be his 37th birthday. Before their departure from Montana, he suspected Ellie and Ben planned a surprise party for him. Although he considered himself too old for birthday parties, he would endure it, if it made Ellie happy.
Ellie dialed her parent’s number. After a few rings, the answering machine connected. “Hi, it’s Ellie. I wanted to let you know we’re fine. We're going to withdraw the money this afternoon, thanks so much for your help. I’ll talk to you later. Love you both. Bye...”
Alan massaged his forehead, trying to rub his headache away; two aspirins had failed to make a dent in the pain. He recognized the culprit to be stress and a lack of sleep.
Normally, he handled, even thrived on the pressure inherent in his field; the pressure to unearth the next great discovery; to write the next great research paper. However, this situation differed from any previous experience. From his funding problems, his worry about Ellie and the others, and the uncertainty of their current predicament, he could feel the strain squeezing him on all sides.
He contemplated the meeting ahead of him; a meeting he wished to avoid. He did not have any desire to share with anyone the sheer terror he experienced on the island. He could not explain the emotional paralysis that overwhelmed him when confronted with a traumatic experience. Even after four years, he found the subject of his wife and child’s death too painful, too personal to discuss with anyone, even his family, and closest friends. As Ellie approached, he tried to shake off his gloomy mood. “That was quick.”
“I got the answering machine. Wait a minute-are you saying we talk too long on the phone?” she asked in jest.
“No, of course not," he said, smiling. Ellie and her mother sometimes chatted in length when they talked on the phone, but it never bothered him. Because they lived in different states, long-distance calls and the occasional letter kept them in communication.
“Well, I’m glad to hear it.” She glanced at the newspaper. “Anything in the paper?”
He shook his head as he passed the front section to her. “Not a word. I have to hand it to them. They've really put the lid on the story.”
Ellie glanced at the date on the paper, dismayed to see Alan’s birthday would be in two days. With all the turmoil during and after Jurassic Park, the day had slipped her mind. A few weeks earlier, she made a special trip into Great Falls to buy him a gift, and she and Ben planned to throw a surprise birthday party for him. The gift remained in Montana, but she wanted to give him something on his birthday. She figured a new wallet would be good to replace his ruined one. If she could sneak away to the mall, she would be able to buy him one; perhaps she could enlist Joe’s aid. She studied his face, and noted the fatigue lines around his eyes. “Did you get back to sleep?”
“Yeah, after a while. I missed you.”
Ellie took his hand, and caressed his thumb. “I missed you, too. Look, if you want me to, I’ll come back in a heartbeat.” Ellie quietly chuckled. “Lex has given us her permission.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Nope, she said she and Tim wouldn’t tell anyone.”
Alan laughed. “It’s tempting. Actually—” He leaned over and gave her a kiss. “You tempt me."
"I do?" she said in a sultry voice.
"Uh huh. But as happy as it would make me, I think it’s better to keep the sleeping arrangements like they are now."
“Yeah, I agree. Lex seems all right this morning.”
"She does, I'm glad to say," he said
Ellie recalled his disoriented reaction to Lex's scream. "Alan, what happened to you last night, when Lex screamed?"
“After I got her out of the car, the Rex came back to finish the job, and she screamed. Ellie, I swear I was back on the road.” He shrugged and shook his head. “It must've been a flashback of some sort.” After he returned to bed, he began to replay the events in his mind over and over in his mind. Unable to get the images out of his mind, it took him hours to get back to sleep. “Do you think we’ll ever get back to a normal existence?”
“What's normal?” she asked, her expression suddenly bleak. “I don’t know what normal is anymore."
Ellie’s bleak words echoed his feelings; like survivors of any disaster, they both struggled with the aftermath.
“Are you okay with the meeting?” she asked.
"I guess so. I don't have much choice in the matter. Are you going to be okay?" He had been wrong to dictate what Ellie could or could not do, but he hoped the interrogation did not distress her too much. Happily, she seemed calm and collected today.
"I will be." She remembered Joe's words from yesterday. "You know, it might help to talk about everything."
"Maybe so," he said noncommittally.
Alan heard a rap at the door and he checked his watch for the time. "That should be Joe." As they went back inside, they discovered the children had let Joe in.
“Morning, Joe,” Ellie said.
“Good morning, everybody," Joe said, dressed casually in jeans, a forest green polo shirt, and running shoes.
“Guess what?” Tim asked.
“What?” Joe asked.
"I got my bandages off."
"Hey, terrific! I bet you want to go swimming, right?”
“Yeah—Mr. Reiling, can you take us? Ellie said it would be okay,” Tim said.
“If it’s all right with Ellie, then I’ll be glad to.”
“Cool!”
“We ate breakfast a few minutes ago, so you might wait an hour or so,” Ellie said. "Alan thinks an hour would be enough of a swim this morning."
“Gotcha, an hour it'll be. Alan, the account is ready, so I’ll run you over to the embassy this afternoon.”
“Good deal.”
“Mr. Reiling, do you play Monopoly?” Lex asked.
“Uh, well, I haven’t played for a few years.”
“Don’t worry, it’ll come back to you,” she said, with a smirk.
Joe looked at Alan, who laughed. Better you than me, my friend, Alan said to himself; he hoped to avoid the Monopoly trap altogether.
"Any news from Pauley?" Alan asked.
"No, I'm afraid not. The Costa Rican's are being hard-core about the whole matter."
Alan nodded, and exhaled, as he heard a tap at the door. He swung open the door, and found a young Hispanic man standing across the threshold.
“Dr. Grant?” The man asked.
“Yes, I’m Dr. Grant.”
“Good morning, sir. My name is Sandoval. If you are ready, I am to escort you to Minister Olvera.”
Alan nodded, as ready as he'd ever be. “Ellie?”
Ellie joined him at the door. “Guys, we’ll see you later.”
“Okay, we'll be good,” Tim said.
Ellie smiled at the boy. “I know you will." The kids might have simply been on their best behavior, but they had been no trouble whatsoever, other than a few arguments. She could recall similar instances with her siblings. Despite the arguments, she sensed they shared a deep bond; a bond they would need to recover from both their parents divorce, and their frightening experience on Isla Nublar.
As they entered Olvera’s reception area, Alan spotted Pauley waiting for them. “Good morning, Ambassador,” he said.
“Good morning, folks. I hope Joe’s taking good care of you."
“He is," Alan said. Beyond his aid, Alan considered Joe a much-needed friend and ally. "He’s watching Lex and Tim while we’re here."
“Good. How are the kids doing?”
“So-so,” Ellie said. “Lex had a bad nightmare last night. It’s hard to tell about Tim. Outwardly he’s fine, but I'm not sure what’s going on inside his head.” She glanced at Alan, and he nodded his agreement. "He's happy today, he gets to go swimming."
“His hands are better?” Pauley asked.
“Much better,” Alan said.
“Ah, excellent. Joe told me they're staying with you until Mrs. Murphy can come and get them.”
"It seemed the easiest solution with her divorce hearings going on," Alan said.
Pauley nodded. "I don't think there will be any delays, when she gets here."
"Oh, by the way, I talked to Morris yesterday. He's sending us all the information the EPA has on InGen."
"What's the status of the investigation?" Ellie asked.
"The EPA and the Costa Rican government are cooperating in the investigation. I think it's safe to say, at the least, there will be large fines for InGen."
"I sure as hell hope so," Alan said.
“Dr. Grant, Dr. Sattler, good morning,” Olvera said, as he came out of his office.
“Good morning, Minister Olvera. I’d like to thank you for your patience,” Alan said.
“I trust you’re feeling better.”
“Much better, thank you,” Alan said. Although some stiffness remained from the injury, little pain lingered.
“That is good to hear. If you’ll step this way, please.”
Alan and Ellie exchanged glances as they crossed into Olvera's office, and she flashed him a quick smile. As they took their seats across from the Minister, Olvera and Pauley once again took out pens and writing pads.
Pauley briefly consulted his notes. “Dr. Grant, you were telling us what happened when the power went off.”
“Right,” Alan said, relieved at the lack of small talk. “When Nedry cut off the power, the car stopped in front of the T-Rex paddock. The Rex smashed the fence and tried to eat the other car."
“The one with the children and Ed Regis, correct?” Olvera asked.
Alan nodded "Malcolm and I grabbed some road flares. We lit a couple and got the Rex’s attention. The damn fool took off, and the Rex followed him.” He recalled feeling ridiculous, as he stood alone, facing the Rex, armed only with a road flare. “I lost track of him.”
“He had an open fracture in his leg, and the wound developed gangrene,” Ellie said. “We didn’t have any antibiotics to treat the infection, only some morphine for pain.” With the smell of the wound nauseating her, it took every ounce of her willpower to remain in the room to treat him.
Alan grimaced, and then nodded; it would be an unpleasant way to die. “I got Lex out of the car, but I couldn’t get to Tim. The Rex came back and chased us around the car for a while, then the Rex pushed the car over the side of the embankment into a tree, so I climbed up and got him.”
Ellie listened as Alan spoke, amazed they survived at all. However, the calm way he talked surprised her, considering his earlier reluctance, she expected more emotion from him. She worried he had buried the ordeal deep inside himself. She knew instinctively, he needed to release those feelings, much as she had done in the shower. She felt much more in control of her feelings and emotions now. She returned her attention to Alan’s story.
“There were two Rex’s on the island, one adult, and one juvenile. The juvenile found Regis and—played with him, there's no other description. After a few minutes, she tore him apart.” He would never forget those screams; as he stood, engulfed with horror, watching the attack. “I couldn’t do anything to help him. We climbed a tree and stayed there all night.”
“A tree?” Pauley asked.
“Yeah, a damn tall tree.”
Ellie smothered a smile; she knew of his dislike of heights. However, in the field, with solid ground beneath him, he enjoyed sitting on the highest promontory around the campsite, regaling his companions with vivid descriptions of the area in prehistoric times.
“The next morning, we started back to the reception center,” Alan said. “On the way back, I found the eggs.”
The two bureaucrats looked at Alan in surprise. “Eggs?” Olvera asked.
“Yeah, dinosaur eggs.”
“Dr. Grant, how could that be?” Pauley asked. “According to our information, InGen performed some sort of genetic change to make the animals all female. I admit I don’t completely understand the process.”
“The genetic modification didn't work,” Alan said. “The DNA strands they extracted weren’t complete, so they used amphibian DNA to fill the gaps.” He looked intently at Ellie. “Remember the film?”
“Of course—they changed sexes to provide breeding partners,” she said. It would explain how they managed to breed. “Life found a way,” she said sadly, remembering Ian’s prophetic words.
“Yes, it did,” he said.
“Doctors,” Olvera said. “I am confused. Are you telling us some of these animals, despite this change, changed sex and became males? How could this be possible?”
“Minister, Ambassador, some species of amphibians can change sex if there is a shortage of breeding partners. I suspect this happened at Jurassic Park. How they managed to overcome the genetic change, I don’t know. I’m not a geneticist,” he said, “Perhaps a flaw existed in the procedure from the beginning, and the external DNA exploited the flaw. There might have been clues in the DNA strands, but there’s no way to know now.”
“Dr. Grant, are you certain you found dinosaur eggs? Could they possibly have been bird eggs?” Pauley asked.
Alan remained silent, but his eyes bored into Pauley.
After a moment, Pauley cleared his throat. “I apologize, for the absurd question. What I would like to know is why Hammond and the park employees weren’t aware the dinosaurs had bred? Weren’t the employees out in the field checking on the animals and counting them?”
“They placed sensors all around the park to count the animals, but they programmed them to count only the expected number of each species,” Ellie said. She observed Pauley's jaw drop in astonishment. “Alan and Ian both suspected more animals existed than the computers counted, so they asked Henry Arnold to change the calculations. The total number of animals then increased.”
“My God,” Pauley whispered. “How could they have been so incompetent?”
“It wasn’t incompetence, it was arrogance,” Alan said. “They so believed in the infallibility of the technology they created, they simply could not imagine any other possibility.”
"It's a shame they didn't call you in earlier. I think they could have used a dose of your skepticism," Pauley said.
Alan laughed shortly. "I doubt they would have listened to me." The more he discovered about InGen’s monstrosities, the more disgusted he became. Had he known the facts, he would have never become involved with their plans, regardless of the payoff.
“You're probably right, unfortunately. Dr. Sattler, Muldoon told us you were instrumental in restoring the power,” Pauley said.
Ellie shrugged. She did not feel any great accomplishment in the act; she came close to killing them. “After Nedry turned the power off, nothing worked, so we needed to reboot the computers to get the phones working. Why in the world, they tied the phones into the computer system is beyond me." She looked at Alan and shook her head.
"It makes no sense to me either," Alan said. "For safety reasons, they should have kept the phones separate from the computer system."
"Dr. Sattler, can you tell us what happened at the end?" Olvera asked.
Beside her, Alan began to object, and she stilled him with a touch on his arm. "Alan, it's okay."
Alan sat back in his chair, unhappy at the turn of events.
"Henry Arnold went to a utility shed to turn the power back on," Ellie said. "When he didn't come back, I decided to go over there myself. They housed the raptors in a separate enclosure, and when Arnold reset the computers, it turned off the electric fences guarding the enclosure. They escaped and killed him in the shed.” She paused to gather herself, before continuing. “I found his remains after I turned the power back on. One of the raptors began stalking me, but I got away."
She must have thrown the circuit breakers at the same time Tim climbed the fence, Alan realized. He gave her hand a gentle squeeze; he hoped she did not blame herself.
"Dr. Sattler, that was a brave act," Olvera said.
"I didn't have much choice in the matter,” she said, with a shrug. “Muldoon was— indisposed at the time," she said with disgust.
While Ellie told the two men about their desperate attempt to escape, Alan once again wondered what happened between them. Muldoon appeared to be the only InGen employee with any common sense; at least at least when it came to the raptors.
"The choppers came and got us, and we found ourselves here," Ellie said. "End of story..."
"I must say, it’s the end to an astonishing story," Pauley said.
“I would like to ask you something,” Olvera said. “Do you think there is any possibility some of the dinosaurs have escaped to the mainland?”
No matter what they were doing to them, the Costa Rican's deserved to know the truth. “I think they have,” Alan said. “Before we left Montana, we received a fax of an x-ray of what looked like the hindquarters of a Procompsognathus, which they found on the mainland."
"This... Procompsognathus, is it a large animal?" Olvera asked.
"No, it's about the size of a chicken," Alan said.
“I see. Do you still have the fax?” Olvera asked.
Alan shrugged, becoming aware of Olvera's uneasy manner. “I'm not sure, the next time I talk to my crew chief, I'll ask him if they’ve thrown it away.” In the rush to catch Hammond's plane, the fax had been forgotten.
“Thank you.”
“They would have a hard time surviving on the mainland,” Ellie said.
“Why?” Alan asked.
“Another genetic change kept them lysine deficient, so they gave them lysine supplements to keep them alive. There are natural sources for lysine, however.” It sent chills through her to think the animals might be intelligent enough to adapt and survive on the mainland.
"True." Alan sat back in his chair and reflected on Ellie's statement. He once again observed Olvera's uneasy manner; in their previous meeting, the man exuded a calm, even detached manner. What’s going on here, he wondered.
Olvera placed his pen on his desk and looked briefly at the Ambassador. “Ambassador, do you have any more questions,"
"I can't think of anything," Pauley said.
“Then I think we have finished. I would like to thank you both for your candor. You have given us much valuable information.”
“I don’t suppose it would do any good to ask if we can leave,” Alan said, as a formality.
“I do understand you are eager to return home. However, I am afraid we cannot let you go now. I assure you we are doing our best to complete this matter as quickly as possible. I want to thank you again for you patience. We will be in touch with you, soon.”
Finished with the interrogation, Ellie sighed in relief. Even if they could not leave, the most unpleasant part was behind them.
Alan nodded, and as they walked out into the waiting room, Pauley turned towards the two scientists. “It’s easy for me to say, but don’t lose hope.”
“We’re trying not to, Ambassador,” Alan said.
Ellie caught sight of their driver. “I think our ride’s here.”
Sandoval nodded at Alan as he approached. “Dr. Grant, if you are ready to go, I will take you back to your hotel.”
“Thanks.”
Pauley held out his hand, which Alan and Ellie in turn shook. “Well, I’ll let you two get going.”
“Thanks for everything,” Ellie said.
“It was my pleasure. I'll be in touch, I hope with good news. Good luck to you.”
“Thank you, Ambassador,” Alan said.
Their driver led them back to the car and Alan climbed in the back alongside Ellie. Alan didn’t say much; she could tell he was working something out in his mind. Suddenly, his blue eyes widened and he began to smile. She lightly touched his arm. “What are you thinking about?” she asked.
“Leverage…” he said, with a glint in his eyes.
8/22/2005 6:26:36 PM
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