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FIRST ITERATION
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"At the earliest drawings of the fractal curve, few clues to the underlying mathematical structre will be seen"
IAN MALCOLM
Almost Paradise
Mike Bohistled cheerfully as he drove the Land Rover through the Cabo Blanco Biological Reserve, on the west coast of Costa Rica It was a beautiful ing the edge of a cliff, overlooking the jungle and the blue Pacific According to the guidebooks, Cabo Blanco was unspoiled wilderness, al it now made Bowman feel as if the vacation was back on track
Bowman, a thirty-six-year-old real estate developer frohter for a teek holiday The trip had actually been his wife&039;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 appointeon in San Jose That was the first Mike Bowery available in Costa Rica, and all the luxurious private clinics in San Jose
Of course they&039;d had a huge fight, Mike felt she&039;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 wo Queen her senior year at Rice, and that was not even ten years earlier But Ellen tended to be insecure, and worried And it see her looks
That, and everything else
The Land Rover bounced in a pothole, splashing mud Seated beside hiht road? We haven&039;t seen any other people for hours"
"There was another car fifteen o," he reminded her "Re the other way"
"Darling, you wanted a deserted beach," he said, "and that&039;s what you&039;re going to get"
Ellen shook her head doubtfully "I hope you&039;re right"
"Yeah, Dad, I hope you&039;re right," said Christina, froht years old
"Trust ht" He drove in silence a moment "It&039;s beautiful, isn&039;t it? Look at that view It&039;s beautiful"
"It&039;s okay," Tina said
Ellen got out a co under her eyes She sighed, and put the coan to descend, and Mike Bow 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 monkey7"
"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&039;t know," Mike said doubtfully
Tina consulted the pictures in the guidebook "I don&039;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,to this book, &039;the beaches of Cabo Blanco are frequented by a variety of wildlife, including howler and white-faced monkeys, three-toed sloths, and coatimundis&039; You think we&039;ll see a three-toed sloth, Dad?"
"I bet we do"
"Really?"
"Just look in the mirror"
"Very funny, Dad"
The road sloped doard through the jungle, toward the ocean
Mike Bowman felt like a hero when they finally reached the beach: a two-mile crescent of white sand, utterly deserted He parked the Land Rover in the shade of the palot out the box lunches Ellen changed into her bathing suit, saying, "Honestly, I don&039;t kno I&039;ht off"
"You look great, hon" Actually, he felt that she was too thin, but he had learned not to mention that
Tina was already running down the beach
"Don&039;t forget you need your sunscreen," Ellen called
"Later," Tina shouted, over her shoulder "I&039; to see if there&039;s a sloth
Ellen Bowman looked around at the beach, and the trees "You think she&039;s all right?"
"Honey, there&039;s nobody here for miles," Mike said
"What about snakes?"
"Oh, for God&039;s sake," Mike Bowman said "There&039;s no snakes on a beach"
"Well, there ht be"
"Honey," he said firmly "Snakes are cold-blooded They&039;re reptiles They can&039;t control their body terees on that sand If a snake came out, it&039;d be cooked Believe hter sca down the beach, a dark spot on the white sand "Let her go Let her have a good time"
He put his arm around his wife&039;s waist
Tina ran until she was exhausted, and then she threw herself down on the sand and gleefully rolled to the water&039;s edge The ocean arm, and there was hardly any surf at all She sat for a while, catching her breath, and then she looked back toward her parents and the car, to see how far she had co her to return Tina waved back cheerfully, pretending she didn&039;t understand Tina didn&039;t want to put sunscreen on And she didn&039;t want to go back and hear her ht here, and maybe see a sloth
Tina had seen a sloth two days earlier at the zoo in San Jose It looked like a Muppets character, and it seemed harmless In any case, it couldn&039;t move fast; she could easily outrun it
Now herto her, and Tina decided to move out of the sun, back from the water, to the shade of the pal a gnarled tangle of rove roots, which blocked any attempt to penetrate inland Tina sat in the sand and kicked the dried rove leaves She noticed many bird tracks in the sand Costa Rica was fauidebooks said there were three times as many birds in Costa Rica as in all of America and Canada
In the sand, some of the three-toed bird tracks were small, and so faint they could hardly be seen Other tracks were large, and cut deeper in the sand Tina was looking idly at the tracks when she heard a chirping, followed by a rustling in the rove thicket
Did slothssound? Tina didn&039;t think so, but she wasn&039;t sure The chirping was probably so the rustling again, and finally she saw the source of the sounds, A few yards away, a lizard erove roots and peered at her
Tina held her breath A new anis, balancing on its thick tail, and stared at her Standing like that, it was al its back Its tiny front legs ended in little lizard fingers that wiggled in the air The lizard cocked its head as it looked at her
Tina thought it was cute Sort of like a big salaers back
The lizard wasn&039;t frightened It cas It was hardly bigger than a chicken, and like a chicken it bobbed its head as it walked Tina thought it would make a wonderful pet
She noticed that the lizard left three-toed tracks that looked exactly like bird tracks The lizard ca to frighten the little animal She was amazed that it would come so close, but she remembered that this was a national park All the animals in the park would know that they were protected This lizard was probably taive it some food Unfortunately she didn&039;t have any Slowly, Tina extended her hand, palm open, to show she didn&039;t have any food
The lizard paused, cocked his head, and chirped
"Sorry," Tina said "I just don&039;t have anything"
And then, without warning, the lizard jumped up onto her outstretched hand Tina could feel its little toes pinching the skin of her palht of the ani her arm down
And then the lizard scrambled up her arm, toward her face
"I just wish I could see her," Ellen Bowht "That&039;s all Just see her"
"I&039;h the box lunch packed by the hotel There was unappetizing grilled chicken, and some kind of a meat-filled pastry Not that Ellen would cat any of it
"You don&039;t think she&039;d leave the beach?" Ellen said
"No, hon, I don&039;t"
"I feel so isolated here," Ellen said
"I thought that&039;s what you wanted," Mike Bowman said
"I did"
"Well, then, what&039;s the problem?"
"I just wish I could see her, is all," Ellen said
Then, frohter&039;s voice She was screa
Puntarenas
"I think she is quite co the plastic flap of the oxygen tent around Tina as she slept Mike Bowht Dr Cruz was probably pretty capable; he spoke excellent English, the result of training at medical centers In London and Baltimore Dr Cruz radiated competence, and the Cl��nica Santa Mar��a, the modern hospital in Puntarenas, was spotless and efficient
But, even so, Mike Bow around the fact that his only daughter was desperately ill, and they were far from home
When Mike had first reached Tina, she was screa hysterically Her whole left arm was bloody, covered with a profusion of small bites, each the size of a thumbprint And there were flecks of sticky foam on her arm, like a foamy saliva
He carried her back down the beach Alan to redden and swell Mike would not soon forget the frantic drive back to civilization, the four-wheel-drive Land Rover slipping and sliding up the hter screarewbefore they reached the park boundaries, the swelling had spread to her neck, and then Tina began to have trouble breathing
"She&039;ll be all right now?" Ellen said, staring through the plastic oxygen tent
"I believe so," Dr Cruz said "I have given her another dose of steroids, and her breathing is reatly reduced"
Mike Bowman said, "About those bites"
"We have no identification yet," the doctor said "I myself haven&039;t seen bites like that before But you&039;ll notice they are disappearing It&039;s already quite difficult to raphs for reference And I have washed her arm to collect some samples of the sticky saliva-one for analysis here, a second to send to the labs in San Jose, and the third ill keep frozen in case it is needed Do you have the picture she made?"
"Yes," Mike Bowman said He handed the doctor the sketch that Tina had drawn, in response to questions fro officials
"This is the ani at the picture
"Yes," Mike Bowreen lizard, the size of a chicken or a crow"
"I don&039;t know of such a lizard," the doctor said "She has drawn it standing on its hind legs"
"That&039;s right," Mike Bows"
Dr Cruz frowned He stared at the picture a while longer "I am not an expert I&039;ve asked for Dr Guitierrez to visit us here He is a senior researcher at the Reserva Biol��gica de Carara, which is across the bay Perhaps he can identify the animal for us"
"Isn&039;t there someone from Cabo Blanco?" Bowman asked "That&039;s where she was bitten"
"Unfortunately not," Dr Cruz said "Cabo Blanco has no permanent staff, and no researcher has worked there for some time You were probably the first people to walk on that beach in several months But I aeable"
Dr Guitierrez turned out to be a beardedkhaki shorts and shirt The surprise was that he was A in a soft Southern accent, "Mr and Mrs Bow that he was a field biologist from Yale who had worked in Costa Rica for the last five years Marty Guitierrez exa closely at each of the bites with a penlight, thenthem with a small pocket ruler After a while, Guitierrez stepped away, nodding to hi He then inspected the Polaroids, and asked several questions about the saliva, which Cruz told hi tested in the lab
Finally he turned to Mike Bow to be fine I just want to be clear about a few details," he said, hter says she was bitten by a green lizard, approxiht onto the beach frorove swaht, yes"
"And the lizard made some kind of a vocalization?"
"Tina said it chirped, or squeaked"
"Like a mouse, would you say?"
"Yes"
"Well, then," Dr Guitierrez said, "I know this lizard" He explained that, of the six thousand species of lizards in the world, no ht Of those species, only four were found in Latin A by the coloration, the lizard could be only one of the four "I am sure this lizard was a Basiliscus amoratus, a striped basilisk lizard, found here in Costa Rica and also in Honduras Standing on their hind legs, they are sometimes as tall as a foot"
"Are they poisonous?"
"No, Mrs Bow in Tina&039;s ar to the literature, fourteen percent of people are strongly allergic to reptiles," he said, "and your daughter seems to be one of the, she said it was so painful"
"Probably it was," Guitierrez said "Reptile saliva contains serotonin, which causes tremendous pain" He turned to Cruz "Her blood pressure came doith antihistamines?"
"Yes," Cruz said "Promptly"
"Serotonin," Guitierrez said "No question"
Still, Ellen Bowman remained uneasy "But ould a lizard bite her in the first place?"
"Lizard bites are very coet bitten all the time And just the other day I heard that a lizard had bitten an infant in her Crib in Amaloya, about sixty miles from where you were So bites do occur I&039;hter had soat the ti She said she was sitting pretty still, because she didn&039;t want to frighten it away"
"Sitting pretty still," Guitierrez said, frowning He shook his head "Well I don&039;t think we can say exactly what happened Wild animals are unpredictable"
"And what about the foa about rabies"
"No, no," Dr Guitierrez said "A reptile can&039;t carry rabies, Mrs Bowic reaction to the bite of a basilisk lizard Nothing more serious"
Mike Bowman then showed Guitierrez the picture that Tina had drawn Guitierrez nodded "I would accept this as a picture of a basillsk lizard," he said "A few details are wrong, of course The neck is s with only three toes instead of five The tall is too thick, and raised too high But otherwise this is a perfectly serviceable lizard of the kind we are talking about"
"But Tina specifically said the neck was long," Ellen Bowman insisted "And she said there were three toes on the foot"