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"But didn&039;t you say you introduced the compys in three batches? At six-month intervals?"

" Yes"

"Then you should get a graph with peaks for each of the three separate batches that were introduced," Malcol the keyboard "Like this"

[picture]

"But you didn&039;t get this graph," Malcol population Your co"

Wu shook his head "I don&039;t see how"

"They&039;re breeding, and so are the othnielia, the maiasaurs, the hypsys-and the velociraptors"

"Christ," Muldoon said "There are raptors free in the park"

"Well, it&039;s not that bad," Ha at the screen "We have increases in just three categories-well, five categories Very small increases in two of the about?" Wu said, loudly "Don&039;t you knohat this means?"

"Of course I knohat this means, Henry," Hammond said "It means you screwed up"

"Absolutely not"

"You&039;ve got breeding dinosaurs out there, Henry&039;

"But they&039;re all female," Wu said "It&039;s impossible There must be aani increases in the number of small animals It just doesn&039;t make sense It must be a mistake"

The radio clicked "Actually not," Grant said "I think these nu place In seven different sites around the island"

Breeding Sites

The sky was growing darker Thunder rumbled in the distance Grant and the others leaned in the doors of the Jeep, staring at the screen on the dashboard "Breeding sites?" Wu said, over the radio

"Nests," Grant said "Assus, these data would indicate the compys have two nests The raptors have two nests The othys have one nest And the hypsys and the maias have one nest each"

"Where are these nests?"

"We&039;ll have to find them," Grant said "Dinosaurs build their nests in secluded places"

"But why are there so few big anigs, there should be eight to twelve new maias Not just one"

"That&039;s right," Grant said "Except that the raptors and the cos of the bigger ani, as well"

"But we&039;ve never seen that," Arnold said, over the radio

"Raptors are nocturnal," he said "Is anyone watching the park at night?"

There was a long silence

"I didn&039;t think so," Grant said

"It still doesn&039;t make sense," Wu said "You can&039;t support fifty additional anis"

"No," Grant said "I assu else as well Perhaps small rodents Mice and rats?"

There was another silence

"Let uess," Grant said "When you first came to the island, you had a problem with rats But as time passed, the problem faded away"

"Yes That&039;s true"

"And you never thought to investigate why"

"Well, we just assumed" Arnold said

"Look," Wu said, "the fact remains, all the animals are female They can&039;t breed"

Grant had been thinking about that He had recently learned of an intriguing West German study that he suspected held the answer "When youwith fraght?"

"Yes," Wu said

"In order to make a complete strand, we&039;re you ever required to include DNA fragments from other species?"

"Occasionally, yes," Wu said "It&039;s the only way to accomplish the job Sometimes we included avian DNA, from a variety of birds, and sometimes reptilian DNA"

"Any a DNA?"

"Possibly I&039;d have to check"

"Check," Grant said "I think you&039;ll find that holds the answer"

Malcol DNA?"

Gennaro said i, but we&039;re forgetting the otten off the island?"

Grant said, "We can&039;t tell frooing to find out?"

"There&039;s only one way I know," Grant said "We&039;ll have to find the individual dinosaur nests, inspect thements Froinally hatched And we can begin to assess whether any are "

Malcol animals are killed, or dead from natural causes, or whether they have left the island"

"No," Grant said, "but it&039;s a start And I think we can get raphs"

"How are we going to find these nests?"

"Actually," Grant said, "I think the computer will be able to help us with that"

"Can we go back now?" Lex said "I&039;o," Grant said, s at her "You&039;ve been very patient"

"You&039;ll be able to eat in about twentytoward the two Land Cruisers

"I&039;ll stay for a while," Ellie said, "and get photos of the stego with Dr Harding&039;s camera Those vesicles in the mouth will have cleared up by toet back," Grant said "I&039;ll go with the kids"

"I will, too," Malcolm said

"I think I&039;ll stay," Gennaro said, "and go back with Harding in his Jeep, with Dr Sattler"

"Fine, let&039;s go"

They started walking Malcol?"

Grant shrugged "I think itto do with Dr Sattler"

"Really? The shorts, you think?"

"It&039;s happened before," Grant said

When they came to the Land Cruisers, Tim said, "I want to ride in the front one this time, with Dr Grant"

Malcolm said, "Unfortunately, Dr Grant and I need to talk"

"I&039;ll just sit and listen I won&039;t say anything," Tim said

"It&039;s a private conversation," Malcolis said "Let them sit in the rear car by themselves We&039;ll sit in the front car, and you can use the night-vision goggles Have you ever used night-vision goggles, Tiles with very sensitive CCDs that allow you to see in the dark"

"Neat," he said, and moved toward the first car

"Hey!" Lex said "I want to use it, too"

"No," Tiet to do everything, Tio and said to Grant, "I can see what the ride back is going to be like"

Grant and Malcolm climbed into the second car A few raindrops spattered the windshield "Let&039;s get going," Ed Regis said "I&039;m about ready for dinner And I could do with a nice banana daiquiri What do you say, folks? Daiquiri sound good?" He pounded the metal panel of the car "See you back at ca toward the first car, and cliht on the dashboard blinked With a soft electric whirr, the Land Cruisers started off

Driving back in the fading light, Malcolm seemed oddly subdued Grant said, "You must feel vindicated About your theory"

"As aa bit of dread I suspect we are at a very dangerous point"

"Why?"

"Intuition"

"Do mathematicians believe in intuition?"

"Absolutely Very i of fractals," Malcolm said "You know about fractals?"

Grant shook his head "Not really, no"

"Fractals are a kind of geometry, associated with a eometry that everybody learns in school-squares and cubes and spheres-fractal geometry appears to describe real objects in the natural world Mountains and clouds are fractal shapes So fractals are probably related to reality Somehow

"Well, Mandelbrot found a res looked almost identical at different scales"

"At different scales?" Grant said

"For exa ed et closer, and exa mountain, it will have the sao all the way down the scale to a tiny speck of rock, seen under a microscope-it will have the sa mountain"

"I don&039;t really see why this is worrying you," Grant said He yawned He smelled the sulfur fu now to the section of road that ran near the coastline, overlooking the beach and the ocean

"It&039;s a way of looking at things," Malcolm said "Mandelbrot found a saest And this sameness of scale also occurs for events"

"Events?"

"Consider cotton prices," Malcol back more than a hundred years When you study fluctuations in cotton prices, you find that the graph of price fluctuations in the course of a day looks basically like the graph for a week, which looks basically like the graph for a year, or for ten years And that&039;s how things are A day is like a whole life You start out doing one thing, but end up doing soet thereAnd at the end of your life, your whole existence has that same haphazard quality, too Your whole life has the sauess it&039;s one way to look at things," Grant said

"No," Malcols At least, the only way that is true to reality You see, the fractal idea of sameness carries within it an aspect of recursion, a kind of doubling back on itself, which e suddenly, and without warning"

"Okay"

"But we have soothed ourselves into i that happens outside the nors An accident, like a car crash Or beyond our control, like a fatal illness We do not conceive of sudden, radical, irrational change as built into the very fabric of existence Yet it is And chaos theory teaches us," Malcolht linearity, which we have co from physics to fiction, si the world Real life isn&039;t a series of interconnected events occurring one after another like beads strung on a necklace Life is actually a series of encounters in which one event e those that follow in a wholly unpredictable, even devastating way" Malcol toward the other Land Cruiser, a few yards ahead "That&039;s a deep truth about the structure of our universe But, for so as if it were not true"

At that moment, the cars jolted to a stop, "What&039;s happened?" Grant said

Up ahead, they saw the kids in the car, pointing toward the ocean Offshore, beneath lowering clouds, Grant saw the dark outline of the supply boatits way back toward Puntarenas

"Why have we stopped?" Malcolm said

Grant turned on the radio and heard the girl saying excitedly, "Look there, Timmy! You see it, it&039;s there!"

Malcol about the boat?"

"Apparently"