Kaiju Preservation Society(13)

I looked up, along with everyone else, to watch what looked like a 747 lazily flap its wings across the sky.

“Is that … a dragon?” Aparna asked, after a long minute.

“Technically not a dragon,” Tom said.

“Technically?” Niamh exclaimed.

Kahurangi nodded and pointed. “Once again, Niamh speaks for me.”

“If it’s not a dragon, what is it?” I asked.

“It’s a kaiju,” Tom said.

“A kaiju.”

“Yes.”

“An actual fucking kaiju,” I repeated. “Like the Japanese movie monsters.”

“Almost exactly like that,” Tom said. “Hey, I told you we worked with large animals.”

“Dude, I thought you were talking about polar bears.”

Tom laughed and shook his head. “Nope. Actual fucking kaiju, as you put it. It’s in the name, after all.”

“What?” I said.

“KPS,” Tom said. “It stands for Kaiju Preservation Society. That’s who we are, Jamie. That’s why we’re here. That’s what we do.”

From the distance a low, rumbling roar rolled over us. I turned and watched as a small mountain on the horizon stood up and looked in our direction.





CHAPTER

5




“So this is Tanaka Base,” I said to Tom, after I had managed to pick my jaw up from the pavilion sidewalk.

He shook his head. “This is Honda Base,” he said. He caught my look. “It’s not named after the car company, I promise you. It’s named for Ishiro Honda. He directed the original Godzilla movie in 1954. All the North American bases are named for the people who made the movie. Tanaka Base, Chuko-Kita Base, Nakajima Base, and so on. Tanaka is named for the movie’s producer. There were other Tanakas involved with the movie, though. It’s a common name.”

“The fourth most common in Japan,” Kahurangi said.

“Someone was looking at Wikipedia before we left,” Tom observed.

“Naming your bases for Godzilla filmmakers is a little on the nose,” Niamh said to Tom.

“It is,” Tom admitted. “We sort of lean in to that here. You have to, because how could you not, right? You can’t pretend you don’t know. And not just with kaiju movies. You have no idea how difficult it was for me to not say, ‘Welcome to Jurassic Park!’ to all of you just now.”

“Jurassic Park didn’t end well for anyone in it,” I pointed out. “Book or movie.”

“Well, they were sloppy,” Tom said. “We’re not sloppy. And, they were fictional. This is real.”

“But how is this real?” I asked. “How do we walk into a room in an icy Greenland and walk out in one that’s a jungle?”

“And has dragons,” Aparna added.

“Technically not dragons,” Tom said to her, and then looked at all of us, taking the newbies in as a group. “Come on. Let’s get lunch and I’ll explain there.”



* * *



The Honda Base commissary was the size of a small-town market, and offered a salad bar and buffet. All of us newbies looked at it, uncertainly.

“What is it?” Tom asked, his plate ready. “You’re holding up the line.”

“We just came from a world where salad bars and buffets are no longer a thing,” I reminded him.

“It’s fine. Look.” He went around me and started digging in.

“All of this produce looks very … boring,” Niamh said. “You could get it in any developed country.”

“You’re wondering where the native produce is,” Tom said.

“Yeah.”

“You wouldn’t like most of it.”

“Why not?”

“Because our produce has been designed by us for centuries to be things we want to eat,” Aparna said to Niamh. “Nothing here has been cultivated with us in mind.” Aparna looked at Tom. “Right?”

Tom nodded. “We grow the produce here, in greenhouses. It’s just not of here. But if you’re feeling adventurous, you can try some of those.” He pointed down to the end of the salad bar.

We all looked. “Mate, those look like fossilized turds,” Kahurangi said.

“That’s why we call them poopfruit, yes,” Tom said.

“You need to talk to your marketing people,” I suggested.

“They taste better than they look.”

“They would have to, wouldn’t they?”

A couple of minutes later we were all seated at a wooden picnic table inside the commissary, because even a few minutes out in Jungle Greenland was a wilting experience. The plan, Tom told us, was to have lunch, and then we and every other member of Gold Team would be on our way to Tanaka Base.

But first, some explanations.

“I’m not a scientist,” Tom said to us as we ate. None of us braved the poopfruit. “And I know you are—well, most of you”—he nodded at me—“and the one of you who isn’t is an expert in science fiction. So I’m going to leave the scientific details to other people. I’m just going to tell you what they told me when I was in your shoes.”