The Lost World - Michael Crichton [88]
“I get it,” King said. “These red circles are infrared signatures!”
“Yes,” Dodgson said. “Big animals leave big signatures. I got all the satellite flybys over this island for the last few years, and mapped the location of heat sources. And the locations overlapped from pass to pass, which is what makes these red concentric marks. Meaning that the animals tend to be located in these particular places. Why?” He turned to King. “Because these are the nesting sites.”
“Yes. They must be,” Baselton said.
“Maybe that’s where they eat,” King said.
Dodgson shook his head irritably. “Obviously, those circles can’t be feeding sites.”
“Why not?”
“Because these animals average twenty tons apiece, that’s why. You get a herd of twenty-ton dinos, and you’re talking a combined biomass of more than half a million pounds moving through the forest. That many big animals are going to eat a lot of plant matter in the course of a day. And the only way they can do that is by moving. Right?”
“I guess . . .”
“You guess? Look around you, Howard. Do you see any denuded sections of forest? No, you don’t. They eat a few leaves from the trees, and move on. Trust me, these animals have to move to eat. But what they don’t move is their nesting sites. So these red circles must be nesting sites.” He glanced at the map. “And unless I’m wrong, the first of the nests is just over this rise, and down the hill on the other side.”
The Jeep fishtailed in a patch of mud, and ground forward, lurching up the hill.
Mating Calls
Richard Levine stood in the high hide, staring at the herds through binoculars. Malcolm had gone back to the trailer with the others, leaving Levine alone. In fact, Levine was relieved to have him gone. Levine was quite content to make observations on these extraordinary animals, and he was aware that Malcolm did not share his boundless enthusiasm. Indeed, Malcolm always seemed to have other considerations on his mind. And Malcolm was notably impatient with the act of observation—he wanted to analyze the data, but he did not want to collect it.
Of course, among scientists, that represented a well-known difference in personality. Physics was a perfect example. The experimentalists and the theorists lived in utterly different worlds, passing papers back and forth but sharing little else in common. It was almost as if they were in different disciplines.
And for Levine and Malcolm, the difference in their approach had surfaced early, back in the Santa Fe days. Both men were interested in extinction, but Malcolm approached the subject broadly, from a purely mathematical standpoint. His detachment, his inexorable formulas, had fascinated Levine, and the two men began an informal exchange over frequent lunches: Levine taught Malcolm paleontology; Malcolm taught Levine nonlinear mathematics. They began to draw some tentative conclusions which both found exciting. But they also began to disagree. More than once they were asked to leave the restaurant; then they would go out into the heat of Guadelupe Street, and walk back toward the river, still shouting at each other, while approaching tourists hurried to the other side of the street.
In the end, their differences came down to personalities. Malcolm considered Levine pedantic and fussy, preoccupied with petty details. Levine never saw the big picture. He never looked at the consequences of his actions. For his own part, Levine did not hesitate to call Malcolm imperious and detached, indifferent to details.
“God is in the details,” Levine once reminded him.
“Maybe your God,” Malcolm shot back. “Not mine. Mine is in the process.”
Standing in the high hide, Levine thought that answer was exactly what you would expect from a mathematician. Levine was quite satisfied that details were everything, at least in biology, and that the most common failing of his biological colleagues was insufficient attention to detail.
For himself, Levine lived for the details, and he could not ever let them go. Like the animal that had attacked him with Diego. Levine thought of it often,