The Lost World - Michael Crichton [43]
“I don’t know,” Malcolm said. “But somebody’s trying to find out. My office was broken into today, and photographed.”
“Great.” Thorne sighed. “But you didn’t know where the island was, did you?”
“No. I hadn’t put it together yet.”
“Do you think anybody else has?”
“No,” Malcolm said. “We’re on our own.”
Exploitation
Lewis Dodgson threw open the door marked ANIMAL QUARTERS, and immediately all the dogs began barking. Dodgson walked down the corridor between the rows of cages, stacked ten feet high on both sides. The building was large; the Biosyn Corporation of Cupertino, California, required an extensive animal-testing facility.
Walking alongside him, Rossiter, the head of the company, gloomily brushed the lapels of his Italian suit. “I hate this fucking place,” he said. “Why did you want me to come here?”
“Because,” Dodgson said. “We need to talk about the future.”
“Stinks in here,” Rossiter said. He glanced at his watch. “Get on with it, Lew.”
“We can talk in here.” Dodgson led him to a glass-walled superintendent’s booth, in the center of the building. The glass cut down the sound of the barking. But through the windows, they could look out at the rows of animals.
“It’s simple,” Dodgson said, starting to pace. “But I think it’s important.”
Lewis Dodgson was forty-five years old, bland-faced and balding. His features were youthful, and his manner was mild. But appearances were deceiving—the baby-faced Dodgson was one of the most ruthless and aggressive geneticists of his generation. Controversy had dogged his career: as a graduate student at Hopkins, he had been dismissed for planning human gene therapy without FDA permission. Later, after joining Biosyn, he had conducted a controversial rabies-vaccine test in Chile—the illiterate farmers who were the subjects were never informed they were being tested.
In each case, Dodgson explained that he was a scientist in a hurry, and could not be held back by regulations drawn up for lesser souls. He called himself “results-oriented,” which really meant he did whatever he considered necessary to achieve his goal. He was also a tireless self-promoter. Within the company, Dodgson presented himself as a researcher, even though he lacked the ability to do original research, and had never done any. His intellect was fundamentally derivative; he never conceived of anything until someone else had thought of it first. He was very good at “developing” research, which meant stealing someone else’s work at an early stage. In this, he was without scruple and without peer. For many years he had run the reverse-engineering section at Biosyn, which in theory examined competitors’ products and determined how they were made. But in practice, “reverse engineering” involved a great deal of industrial espionage.
Rossiter, of course, had no illusions about Dodgson. He disliked him, and avoided him as much as possible. Dodgson was always taking chances, cutting corners; he made Rossiter uneasy. But Rossiter also knew that modern biotechnology was highly competitive. To stay competitive, every company needed a man like Dodgson. And Dodgson was very good at what he did.
“I’ll come right to the point,” Dodgson said, turning to Rossiter. “If we act quickly, I believe we have an opportunity to acquire the InGen technology.”
Rossiter sighed. “Not again. . . .”
“I know, Jeff. I know how you feel. I admit, there is some history here.”
“History? The only history is you failed—time and again. We’ve tried this, back door and front door. Hell, we even tried to buy the company when it was in Chapter 11, because you told us it would be available. But it turned out it wasn’t. The Japanese wouldn’t sell.”
“I understand, Jeff. But let’s not forget—”
“What I can’t forget,” Rossiter said, “is that we paid seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars to your friend Nedry, and have nothing to show for it.”
“But Jeff—”
“Then we paid five hundred thousand to that Dai-Ichi marriage broker. Nothing to show for that, either. Our attempts to acquire InGen technology have been