Jurassic Park - Crichton Michael (книги бесплатно читать без .TXT) 📗

Hammond also concealed from prospective investors the fact that the elephant's behavior had changed substantially in the process of miniaturization. The little creature might look like an elephant, but he acted like a vicious rodent, quick-moving and mean-tempered. Hammond discouraged people from petting the elephant, to avoid nipped fingers.

And although Hammond spoke confidently of seven billion dollars in annual revenues by 1993, his project was intensely speculative. Hammond had vision and enthusiasm, but there was no certainty that his plan would work at all. Particularly since Norman Atherton, the brains behind the project, bad terminal cancer-which was a final point Hammond neglected to mention.

Even so, with Gennaro's help, Hammond got his money. Between September of 1983 and November of 1985, John Alfred Hammond and his "Pachyderm Portfolio" raised $870 million in venture capital to finance his proposed corporation, International Genetic Technologies, Inc. And they could have raised more, except Hammond insisted on absolute secrecy, and he offered no return on capital for at least five years. That scared a lot of investors off. In the end, they'd had to take mostly Japanese consortia. The Japanese were the only investors who had the patience.

Sitting in the leather chair of the jet, Gennaro thought about how evasive Hammond was. The old man was now ignoring the fact that Gennaro's law firm had forced this trip on him. Instead, Hammond behaved as if they were engaged in a purely social outing. "It's too bad you didn't bring your family with you, Donald," he said.

Gennaro shrugged. "It's my daughter's birthday. Twenty kids already scheduled. The cake and the clown. You know how it is."

"Oh, I understand," Hammond said. "Kids set their hearts on things."

"Anyway, is the park ready for visitors?" Gennaro asked.

"Well, not officially," Hammond said. "But the hotel is built, so there is a place to stay…"

"And the animals?"

"Of course, the animals are all there. All in their spaces."

Gennaro said, "I remember in the original proposal you were hoping for a total of twelve…"

"Ob, we're far beyond that. We have two hundred and thirty-eight an'mals, Donald."

Two hundred and thirty-eight?"

The old man giggled, pleased at Gennaro's reaction. "You can't imagine it. We have herds of them."

"Two hundred and thirty-eight… How many species?"

"Fifteen different species, Donald."

"That's incredible," Gennaro said. "That's fantastic. And what about all the other things you wanted? The facilities? The computers?"

"All of it, all of it," Hammond said. "Everything on that island is state-of-the-art. You'll see for yourself, Donald. It's perfectly wonderful. That's why this… concern… is so misplaced. There's absolutely no problem with the island."

Gennaro said, "Then there should be absolutely no problem with an inspection."

"And there isn't," Hammond said. "But it slows things down. Everything has to stop for the official visit…"

"You've had delays anyway. You've postponed the opening."

"Oh, that " Hammond tugged at the red silk handkerchief in the breast pocket of his sportcoat. "It was bound to happen. Bound to happen."

"Why?" Gennaro asked.

"Well, Donald," Hammond said, "to explain that, you have to go back to the initial concept of the resort. The concept of the most advanced amusement park in the world, combining the latest electronic and biological technologies. I'm not talking about rides. Everybody has rides. Coney Island has rides. And these days everybody has animatronic environments. The haunted house, the pirate den, the wild west, the earthquake-everyone has those things. So we set out to make biological attractions. Living attractions. Attractions so astonishing they would capture the imagination of the entire world."

Gennaro had to smile. It was almost the same speech, word for word, that he had used on the investors, so many years ago. "And we can never forget the ultimate object of the project in Costa Rica-to make money," Hammond said, staring out the windows of the jet. "Lots and lots of money.

"I remember," Gennaro said.

"And the secret to making money in a park," Hammond said, "is to limit your Personnel costs. The food handlers, ticket takers, cleanup crews, repair teams. To make a park that runs with minimal staff. That was why we invested in all the computer technology-we automated wherever we could."

"I remember…"

"But the plain fact is," Hammond said, when you put together all the animals and all the computer systems, you run into snags. Who ever got a major computer system up and running on schedule? Nobody I know."

"So you've just had normal start-up delays?"

"Yes, that's right," Hammond said. "Normal delays."

"I heard there were accidents during construction," Gennaro said. "Some workmen died…"

"Yes, there were several accidents," Hammond said. "And a total of three deaths. Two workers died building the cliff road. One other died as a result of an earth-mover accident in January. But we haven't had any accidents for months now." He put his band on the younger man's arm. "Donald," he said, "believe me when I tell you that everything on the island is going forward as planned. Everything on that island is perfectly fine."

The intercom clicked. The pilot said, "Seat belts, please. We're landing in Choteau."

Dry plains stretched away toward distant black buttes. The afternoon wind blew dust and tumbleweed across the cracked concrete. Grant stood with Ellie near the Jeep and waited while the sleek Grumman jet circled for a landing.

"I hate to wait on the money men," Grant grumbled.

Ellie shrugged."Goes with the job."

Although many fields of science, such as physics and chemistry, had become federally funded, paleontology remained strongly dependent on private patrons. Quite apart from his own curiosity about the island in Costa Rica, Grant understood that, if John Hammond asked for his help, he would give it. That was how patronage worked-how it had always worked.

The little jet landed and rolled quickly toward them. Ellie shouldered her bag. The iet came to a stop and a stewardess in a blue uniform opened the door.

Inside, he was surprised at how cramped it was, despite the luxurious appointments. Grant had to hunch over as he went to shake Hammond's hand.

"Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler," Hammond said. "It's good of you to join us. Allow me to introduce my associate, Donald Gennaro."

Gennaro was a stocky, muscular man in his mid-thirties wearing an Armani suit and wire-frame glasses. Grant disliked him on sight. He shook hands quickly. When Ellie shook hands, Gennaro said in surprise, "You're a woman."

"These things happen," she said, and Grant thought: She doesn't like him, either-

Hammond turned to Gennaro. "You know, of course, what Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler do. They are paleontologists. They dig up dinosaurs." And then he began to laugh, as if he found the idea very funny.

"Take your seats, please," the stewardess said, closing the door. Immediately the plane began to move.

"You'll have to excuse us," Hammond said, "but we are in a bit of a rush. Donald thinks it's important we get right down there."

The pilot announced four hours' flying time to Dallas, where they would refuel, and then go on to Costa Rica, arriving the following morning.

"And how long will we be in Costa Rica?" Grant asked.

"Well, that really depends," Gennaro said. "We have a few things to clear up."

"Take my word for it," Hammond said, turning to Grant. "We'll be down there no more than forty-eight hours."

Grant buckled his seat belt. "This island of yours that we're going to-I haven't heard anything about it before. Is it some kind of secret?"

"In a way," Hammond said. "We have been very, very careful about making sure nobody knows about it, until the day we finally open that island to a surprised and delighted public."

The Biosyn Corporation of Cupertino, California, had never called an emergency meeting of its board of directors. The ten directors now sitting in the conference room were irritable and impatient. It was 8:00 p.m. They had been talking among themselves for the last ten minutes, but slowly had fallen silent. Shuffling papers. Looking pointedly at their watches.

"What are we waiting for?" one asked.

"One more," Lewis Dodgson said. "We need one more." He glanced at his watch. Ron Meyer's office had said he was coming up on the six o'clock plane from San Diego. He should be here by now, even allowing for traffic from the airport.

"You need a quorum?" another director asked.

"Yes," Dodgson said. "We do."

That shut them up for a moment. A quorum meant that they were going to be asked to make an important decision. And God knows they were, although Dodgson would have preferred not to call a meeting at all. But Steingarten, the head of Biosyn, was adamant. "You'll have to get their agreement for this one, Lew," he had said.

Depending on who you talked to, Lewis Dodgson was famous as the most aggressive geneticist of his generation, or the most reckless. Thirty-four, balding, hawk-faced, and intense, he had been dismissed by Johns Hopkins as a graduate student, for planning gene therapy on human patients without obtaining the proper FDA protocols. Hired by Biosyn, he had conducted the controversial rabies vaccine test in Chile. Now he was the head of product development at Biosyn, which supposedly consisted of "reverse engineering": taking a competitor's product, tearing it apart, learning how it worked, and then making your own version. In practice, it involved industrial espionage, much of it directed toward the InGen corporation.

In the 1980s, a few genetic engineering companies began to ask, "What is the biological equivalent of a Sony Walkman?" These companies weren't interested in pharmaceuticals or health; they were interested in entertainment, sports, leisure activities, cosmetics, and pets. The perceived demand for "consumer biologicals" in the 1990s was high. InGen and Biosyn were both at work in this field.