Jurassic Park - Crichton Michael - Страница 38

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Then he stopped.

"Ellie," he said. "Take a look at this."

"Put it there, babe! Right in the old mitt!" Lex cried, and Gennaro threw the ball to her.

She threw it back so hard that his hand stung. "Take it easy! I don't have a glove!"

"You wimp!" she said contemptuously.

Annoyed, he fired the ball at her, and heard it smack! in the leather. "Now that's more like it," she said.

Standing by the dinosaur, Gennaro continued to play catch as he talked to Malcolm. "How does this sick dinosaur fit into your theory?"

"It's predicted," Malcolm said.

Gennaro shook his head. "Is anything not predicted by your theory?"

"Look," Malcolm said. "It's nothing to do with me. It's chaos theory. But I notice nobody is willing to listen to the consequences of the mathematics. Because they imply very large consequences for human life. Much larger than Heisenberg's principle or Godel's theorem, which everybody rattles on about. Those are actually rather academic considerations. Philosophical considerations. But chaos theory concerns everyday life. Do you know why computers were first built?"

"No," Gennaro said.

"Burn it in there," Lex yelled. "Computers were built in the late 1940s because mathematicians like John von Neumann thought that if you had a computer-a machine to handle a lot of variables simultaneously-you would be able to predict the weather. Weather would finally fall to human understanding. And men believed that dream for the next forty years. They believed that prediction was just a function of keeping track of things. If you knew enough, you could predict anything. That's been a cherished scientific belief since Newton."

"And?"

"Chaos theory throws it right out the window. It says that you can never predict certain phenomena at all. You can never predict the weather more than a few days away. All the money that has been spent on long-range forecasting-about half a billion dollars in the last few decades-is money wasted. It's a fool's errand. It's as pointless as trying to turn lead into gold. We look back at the alchemists and laugh at what they were trying to do, but future generations will laugh at us the same way. We've tried the impossible-and spent a lot of money doing it. Because in fact there are great categories of phenomena that are inherently unpredictable."

"Chaos says that?"

"Yes, and it is astonishing how few people care to hear it," Malcolm said. "I gave all this information to Hammond long before he broke ground on this place. You're going to engineer a bunch of prehistoric animals and set them on an island? Fine. A lovely dream. Charming. But it won't go as planned. It is inherently unpredictable, just as the weather is."

"You told him this?" Gennaro said.

"Yes. I also told him where the deviations would occur. Obviously the fitness of the animals to the environment was one area. This stegosaur is a hundred million years old. It isn't adapted to our world. The air is different, the solar radiation is different, the land is different, the insects are different, the sounds are different, the vegetation is different. Everything is different. The oxygen content is decreased. This poor animal's like a human being at ten thousand feet altitude. Listen to him wheezing."

"And the other areas?"

"Broadly speaking, the ability of the park to control the spread of life forms. Because the history of evolution is that life escapes all barriers. Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way." Malcolm shook his head. "I don't mean to be philosophical, but there it is."

Gennaro looked over. Ellie and Grant were across the field, waving their arms and shouting.

"Did you get my Coke?" Dennis Nedry asked, as Muldoon came back into the control room.

Muldoon didn't bother to answer. He went directly to the monitor and looked at what was happening. Over the radio he heard Harding's voice saying, "-the stego-finally-handle on-now-"

"What's that about?" Muldoon said.

"They're down by the south point," Arnold said. "That's why they're breaking up a little. I'll switch them to another channel. But they found out what's wrong with the stegos. Eating some kind of berry."

Hammond nodded. "I knew we'd solve that sooner or later," he said.

"It's not very impressive," Gennaro said. He held the white fragment, no larger than a postage stamp, up on his fingertip in the fading light. "You sure about this, Alan?"

"Absolutely sure," Grant said. "What gives it away is the patterning on the interior surface, the interior curve. Turn it over and you will notice a faint pattern of raised lines, making roughly triangular shapes."

"Yes, I see them."

"Well, I've dug out two eggs with patterns like that at my site in Montana."

"You're saying this is a piece of dinosaur eggshell?"

"Absolutely," Grant said.

Harding shook his head. "These dinosaurs can't breed."

"Evidently they can," Gennaro said.

"That must be a bird egg," Harding said. "We have literally dozens of species on the island."

Grant shook his head. "Look at the curvature. The shell is almost flat. That's from a very big egg. And notice the thickness of the shell. Unless you have ostriches on this island, it's a dinosaur egg."

"But they can't possibly breed," Harding insisted. "All the animals are female."

"All I know," Grant said, "is that this is a dinosaur egg."

Malcolm said, "Can you tell the species?"

"Yes," Grant said. "It's a velociraptor egg."

"Absolutely absurd," Hammond said in the control room, listening to the report over the radio. "It must be a bird egg. That's all it can be."

The radio crackled. He heard Malcolm's voice. "Let's do a little test, shall we? Ask Mr. Arnold to run one of his computer tallies."

"Now?"

"Yes, right now. I understand you can transmit it to the screen in Dr. Harding's car. Do that, too, will you?"

"No problem," Arnold said. A moment later, the screen in the control room printed out:

Total Animals 238____________________

Species Expected Found Ver

Tyrannosaurs 2 2 4.1

Maiasaurs 21 21 3.3

Stegosaurs 4 4 3.9

Triceratops 8 8 3.1

Procompsognathids 49 49 3.9

Othnielia 16 16 3.1

Velociraptors 8 8 3.0

Apatosaurs 17 17 3.1

Hadrosaurs 11 11 3.1

Dilophosaurs 7 7 4.3

Pterosaurs 6 6 4.3

Hypsilophodontids 33 33 2.9

Euoplocepbalids 16 16 4.0

Styracosaurs 18 18 3.9

Callovosaurs 22 22 4.1

Total 238 238

"I hope you're satisfied," Hammond said. "Are you receiving it down there on your screen?"

"We see it," Malcolm said.

"Everything accounted for, as always." He couldn't keep the satisfaction out of his voice.

"Now then," Malcolm said. "Can you have the computer search for a different number of animals?"

"Like what?" Arnold said.

"Try two hundred thirty-nine."

"Just a minute," Arnold said, frowning. A moment later the screen printed:

Total Animals 239____________________

Species Expected Found Ver

Tyrannosaurs 2 2 4.1

Maiasaurs 21 21 3.3

Stegosaurs 4 4 3.9

Triceratops 8 8 3.1

Procompsognathids 49 50 3.9

Othnielia 16 16 3.1

Velociraptors 8 8 3.0

Apatosaurs 17 17 3.1

Hadrosaurs 11 11 3.1

Dilophosaurs 7 7 4.3

Pterosaurs 6 6 4.3

Hypsilophodontids 33 33 2.9

Euoplocepbalids 16 16 4.0

Styracosaurs 18 18 3.9

Callovosaurs 22 22 4.1

Total 238 239

Hammond sat forward. "What the hell is that?"

"We picked up another compy."

"From where?"

"I don't know!"

The radio crackled. "Now, then: can you ask the computer to search for, let us say, three hundred animals?"

"What is he talking about?" Hammond said, his voice rising. "Three hundred animals? What's he talking about?"

"Just a minute," Arnold said. "Tbat'll take a few minutes." He punched buttons on the screen. The first line of the totals appeared:

Total Animals 239____________________

"I don't understand what he's driving at," Hammond said.

"I'm afraid I do," Arnold said. He watched the screen. The numbers on the first line were clicking:

Total Animals 244____________________

"Two hundred forty-four?" Hammond said. "What's going on?"

"The computer Is counting the animals in the park," Wu said. "All the animals."

"I thought that's what it always did." He spun. "Nedry! Have you screwed up again?"

"No," Nedry said, looking up from his console. "Computer allows the operator to enter an expected number of animals, in order to make the counting process faster. But it's a convenience, not a flaw."

"He's right," Arnold said. "We just always used the base count of two hundred thirty-eight because we assumed there couldn't be more."

Total Animals 262____________________

"Wait a minute," Hammond said. "These animals can't breed. The computer must be counting field mice or something."

" I think so, too," Arnold said. "It's almost certainly an error in the visual tracking. But we'll know soon enough."

Hammond turned to Wu. "They can't breed, can they?"

"No," Wu said.

Total Animals 270____________________

"Where are they coming from?" Arnold said,

"Damned if I know," Wu said.

They watched the numbers climb.

Total Animals 283____________________

Over the radio, they heard Gennaro say, "Holy shit, how much more?"

And they heard the girl say, "I'm getting hungry. When are we going home?"

"Pretty soon, Lex. "

On the screen, there was a flashing error message:

ERROR: Search Params: 3000 Animals Not Found ____________________

"An error," Hammond said, nodding. "I thought so. I had the feeling all along there must be an error."

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