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Jurassic Park: X-Factor (Chapter Twelve--After Dark)
By drucifer67
Lex loosened the laces of her boots and coaxed them from her aching feet. She tied the boots together by the laces and hooked them over a limb in the tree several inches above her, and this simple act left her feeling like she had just spent two days at the gym. She couldn’t remember when she had been so incredibly sore, but she gave no sign; she bit her lip to keep from moaning in pain. No way would she give Rick and his crew the satisfaction of knowing the day’s events had taken a toll on her.
Dark had fallen quickly, just as Dr. Grant had warned, and the island was enveloped in a great and mysterious blackness. So far from civilization, so many miles from the lights of the city, the night held an unfamiliar quality. Never had she found herself in such complete darkness, and even through the dense canopy of the jungle, she could see more stars than she had ever seen before. It was night as she had never known it.
She pressed her back against one fork of the tree and crossed her ankles neatly in front of her. Tilting her head back, she closed her eyes and welcomed the sleep that she knew would come quickly.
She could hear Alan grunting a few feet away, in his own tree, straining to settle into a comfortable position, and before she realized it, she was laughing.
"What is it?" Alan said softly.
"Not exactly the Holiday Inn, is it?"
"Not exactly." She could hear the smile in Alan's voice, drifting back to her from somewhere in the darkness.
She thought of another night spent in a tree, not so many miles from here, and remembered something Alan Grant had said to her nearly a decade before. As she repeated his words aloud, Lex couldn't help but laugh again. "I'll stay awake. All night."
"What?" Alan whispered insistently.
"When I was a kid, you promised you'd stay awake. When the three of us camped in the tree. Remember?"
"I remember."
"What's funny is, I believed you. You were the adult, doing his duty. Now that I'm grown up, I can see there was no way you could have stayed awake all night, after what you'd been through. No way anyone could."
"We all went through a lot that day," Grant offered.
"But you were the grown-up. Sure, we went through a lot physically, but you had to make the decisions where to go, what to do, where to sleep—and when it was okay to lie to a terrified child."
She let this sink in for a moment before she continued: "I don't think I ever thanked you for all you did for us that weekend."
"You thanked me. Tim thanked me. Your grandfather thanked me. It's enough."
"You were there when Tim and I needed you," Lex insisted. "That's worth more than you'll ever know. And now that we need you again…well, anyway, thank you again, Dr. Grant. For everything."
"Please." he said, "it's just Alan. And really, Lex, I'm here with you now because…" He paused, seeming to struggle with the words. "Well, I suppose I'm here because nothing else makes any sense. I couldn't let you come alone, and we couldn't just ignore the possibility that your brother is out there somewhere. I would have liked to have talked you out of this altogether, but since I couldn't—"
"You never stop being a scientist, do you?" she said, smiling.
"I'm not sure what you mean," he replied.
"Listen to you, analyzing the situation to death. Maybe you could say 'I just wanted to help, Lex'."
There was an indefinite pause, then Alan's voice echoed back to her: "I just wanted to help, Lex."
"You see how easy that was, Doctor?"
She could hear Grant laughing softly. "It wasn't too difficult," he admitted. "Now, I'm going to suggest we try to get some sleep."
She agreed, and lay her head back once more, knowing that mental and physical exhaustion would soon spirit her away to the dream world.
Before she could begin to drift, however, movement in the undergrowth startled her. She sat up quickly, cocking her head to listen.
The noise came again, this time followed by whispered voices. Lex leaned forward, straining to decipher the sounds.
Then she heard Grant’s voice, soft but commanding: “What’s going on?”
“Night hunt,” Carlisle called back, his voice low, just enough to be heard.
“I wouldn’t advise it,” Grant warned. “Many of the predators on this island have exceptional vision.”
“So do we,” Carlisle answered, and someone laughed. Lex recognized the laugh as Rick’s, and rolled her eyes.
“Zero-lux vision augmentation gear,” Rick informed Grant.
“Best money can buy,” Carlisle added. “We shouldn’t be gone more than a couple of hours. We’re going to stick close to camp.”
With that, the two set out. Lex listened to their movement through the brush until she could hear them no more, then lay her head back once again. She closed her eyes and sighed, thinking of Tim. She had set out to bring him back from this place, and now she and Dr. Grant had nothing at their disposal but a few modest weapons and four complete morons. A feeling of impending doom settled stealthily over her, taking away the last faint light of hope. She realized, now that the day had passed and things had slowed enough to actually think this thing through, that she wouldn’t give the team one chance in ten of getting off Isla Sorna alive.
But here they were, betting their lives on it, just the same.
Her feelings of dread were suddenly overpowered by a great rage. There would be much more to hope for, she knew, if only these so-called professionals would listen to Dr. Grant and stop throwing caution to the wind. Her grandfather had no doubt paid them exorbitantly for their services, but she now knew what he hadn’t known—they were complete idiots, and not worth one tenth of what they were probably being compensated.
Especially Rick. Just thinking of him made her feel as if she might burst. He was so arrogant, and so assuming, and so nonchalant about where they were and what they had come to do. Rick. Why did she even have to think of him?
And, so thinking, Lex drifted away to sleep.
Grant was not so fortunate as Lex. Sleep eluded him, partly because he knew far too much about the animals that roamed and predated this jungle, and partly because of the damn tree. He had chosen one with a nice, broad gap between the forks, one that offered more than enough room to stretch his legs and relax. Unfortunately, he had also chosen a tree with a baseball-sized knot growing right where his lower back came to rest against the trunk. He found himself wishing for the high hide, lost in the flaming wreck of the SUV a few hours and a half a lifetime before.
He felt sleep might not come at all. The knot in the tree was bad enough, but there was more, and as badly as he hated to admit it, the fact came bursting in like an unwelcome guest—the kind of guest who brings two suitcases. The simple, unavoidable fact let itself into his mind in the form of a simple phrase:
I’m not as young as I used to be.
He thought of the miles he had traveled, the accomplishments of his lifetime, and it all seemed so pointless now—after all, it was clear that while InGen’s work had produced poor specimens, it was a matter of time before the need for diggers dwindled away to nothing. He had considered this possibility since his first visit to Isla Nublar, now a decade past. But for reasons he couldn’t fathom, the idea of being rendered worthless by technology had become much more real to him of late. Machines that had been in their infancy ten years earlier, like the Thumper, a device that used an explosive charge to bounce radar readings to the surface, were making the art and science of unearthing real fossils obsolete. As yet, there was no substitute for some of his work—studying the brain cavities of the dinosaurs, for example, still required exhumation—but it seemed obvious that only a few years’ technological growth stood in the way of the no-hands approach that was already taking hold. Soon it would be the paleontologists, rather than their finds, in the museums -- pieces of antiquity, leftovers of a bygone era. In time, there would be only a few legendary men and women to serve as reminders of a once great field of study.
And he doubted he’d be numbered among them.
Will Bradford sat in his study, his head propped on his hands. He had been in the same spot since he got home, even taking his dinner there, which in itself was rare. He was going over the twentieth file of the night for the fifth time when Melinda knocked gently at the study door.
"Will?" she called softly, with a hint of uncertainty in her voice.
"Yeah?"
She crossed the room quietly. "It's almost one in the morning, sport," she said quietly. "Are you planning on sleeping tonight?"
"Maybe," he said, sitting upright and combing his hands through his hair. "If that son-of-a-bitch Malcolm will let me."
"Malcolm?"
Will looked around at his wife. "I shouldn't have said that. The details of this project are highly—"
"Classified. Sensitive. Pick your word, I know," she broke in. "What has Ian Malcolm done?"
"It's just that he's—how did you know I was talking about Ian Malcolm?" Will demanded.
She lay her arms on his shoulders and slipped her hands behind his neck, fiddling with the ends of his short hair. She leaned closer and whispered: "You've been talking in your sleep, sweetheart."
He pushed away and stared at her in disbelief.
"You've never done that sort of thing before," she went on, "but over the past few nights you've been a real conversationalist. You keep saying things about Ian Malcolm, and the name 'Eichmann' has come up more times than I care to think about. It's got me worried a little. To tell you the truth, it's got me worried a lot."
Will rocked back in his chair and blew out a heavy, tired sigh. "Malcolm is… I'm not going to say too much here, but he's slowly, single-handedly ruining my career."
"I won't ask how," she said, "since I know you can't tell me. Is there anything I can do?"
"No, babe," Will answered. Melinda didn't care for the resignation in his voice.
"Well," she offered, "whatever he's doing, it can't possibly be bad enough to actually ruin your career, can it? I mean, not really, right?"
"Eichmann is serious about this. Deadly serious. The job he put me on depends on Malcolm, and Malcolm won't budge."
"So budge him. It's what you're good at." She spoke as if she meant it, but there was a hesitant quality in her voice that Will didn't like.
He narrowed his eyes. "There's something else, I can tell. Say it."
She shook her head. "Nothing, really. But I remember when you went through that phase a couple of years back, when you were reading Malcolm's books. You respected him. You said you'd love to have dinner with the guy sometime, remember that? So it's sort of troubling that you've been put in a position like this."
"How so?" Will asked.
"Did you really misjudge him by that much?"
Will opened his mouth to answer, then immediately snapped it shut. Melinda's question had been voiced out of pure concern, but as it echoed in his mind, the tone of the question had somehow changed. Did I really misjudge him by that much?
The answer, of course, was no. Ian Malcolm was quirky, and Will had learned quickly that the mathematician could be stubborn as all hell, but none of that had changed the fact that Will Bradford respected Ian Malcolm, respected his work, respected his mind, and respected him as an individual. He even respected Malcolm's sense of humor, in small enough doses. Why, then, was he allowing the job pressure to have this effect on him? Why did he blame Ian Malcolm? Why had he begun to hate Ian Malcolm?
He turned the thought over in his head for several moments, looking at it from different angles, trying to dissect it.
"Will?" Melinda said, sending his thoughts scattering in a million directions.
"What?" he asked flatly.
"Come to bed. You need to sleep. That's an order from your real boss."
Will agreed, and stood. He smiled a little at her, trying to reassure her that everything was going to be fine, that he was only nervous at the prospect that Malcolm was making him look bad in front of Eichmann.
Then the answer came: Why am I beginning to hate Ian Malcolm? Because Eichmann wants me to hate Ian Malcolm, that's why.
Ian lay on his side, staring into the darkness of the room. He was on the verge of sleep, and knew that it would come soon, but that was nothing out of the ordinary—he had been on the verge of sleep all day. His body, deprived of nutrition, was running on reserves.
He could faintly make out movement in the corner of the room. He cocked his head slightly, trying to focus in the dark, but whatever had been there was gone.
It was his mind, he knew. He had lost track of how many days he had been in this room, this cell, without food, but he knew it was taking its toll on his mind.
He rolled onto his back, deciding that the best course of action at this point might be to simply go to sleep. He closed his eyes and immediately began to drift.
As he spiraled slowly down to sleep, a thought danced on the edge of his consciousness, just out of his reach. He tried to focus, realizing that something important was just beyond his grasp, something that might be critical to Grant and the team—or to himself. The only part of the scattered thought that would crystallize was the question:
Why?
He struggled to pull the thought in further. Why what? Why did I get involved? Why did Grant and Lex go back to that place? Why—
Why are they keeping me?
What can I possibly tell them that Dr. Wu hasn't told them already?
What are they up to?
The answer, so obvious and so simple that he couldn't believe he had overlooked it for so long, flashed across a drive-in movie screen in his mind. He sat in the driver's seat of a nondescript Chevy, staring in disbelief at the answer.
And then the answer was gone, and the Chevy, and the drive-in movie screen, and when the imagery shattered and his mind cleared, the answer was gone again, too.
He managed to grasp enough consciousness to realize that he had to eat, and soon. He would need his mind, if he intended to get out of this place, and his mind, on behalf of his undernourished body, was on strike.
Alan had just begun to doze when he was alerted by the sound of Rick and Carlisle returning. They were talking excitedly back and forth, attempting to keep their voices low but only half-succeeding.
Alan heard his name being called in a rough, half-whispered tone.
“What is it?” he called back.
“That’s my line,” Carlisle responded. “We killed a small carnivore, about a mile that way. Now come down here and tell me, what is it?”
Grant sighed. Sleep, he decided, was overrated anyway. He slowly raised himself up and began to climb down from his sanctuary.
When Grant reached Rick and Carlisle, they switched on their flashlights and aimed them at a carcass lying behind them.
Grant stepped closer, inspecting the dead creature. He knelt and looked over the length and structure of its limbs, the shape of its spine, the details of its head. After a thorough examination, he stood and addressed Rick and Carlisle.
“Gentlemen, I have no doubt that you are the very best at what you do,” Grant began, then paused. He looked from Carlisle to Rick and back, then forged ahead: “Be that as it may, I cannot stress enough how urgent it is to exercise a little discretion.”
“Easy, now, Doc,” Carlisle began, but Grant was determined to have his say.
“Now, I’m sure your guerrilla warfare training, and your years of hunting experience, and whatever else you people put on a résumé, have made you very good at your work. But let me point out to you that this species is oviraptor. Now, I know that probably means nothing to you, but let me say that you gentlemen are to be commended, because now…we don’t have to worry about our eggs being stolen from the nest.”
Grant had grown terribly impatient with these men, but the sheepish look on John Lee Carlisle’s face at that moment made it all worthwhile.
Not waiting for any response, not particularly caring to hear one, Grant returned to his tree and reclined, with his hat on his chest.
He closed his eyes. This time, sleep came easily.
1/22/2003 11:27:57 PM
(Updated: 1/23/2003 1:39:32 AM)
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