Kaiju Preservation Society(27)

“Okay, but why do we care?” I asked.

“Why do we care about pandas?”

“Because they’re cute,” Kahurangi said. “Literally that’s why.”

“You’re not wrong, but the answer I was thinking about is that they’re endangered. Well, so are Edward and Bella.”

“Edward and Bella?” I said. “You named these kaiju after friggin’ Twilight?”

“I didn’t,” Satie said. “If it were up to me, I would have named them Sid and Nancy. Fits their personalities better. But no one asked me. One of you millennials did it.”

“Millennials ruining kaiju naming,” I said to Kahurangi.

“We’re just the worst,” he confirmed.

“Ed and Bel are the only two of their species on this part of the continent. We don’t usually see them north of forty degrees latitude, and we don’t see too many of them below that as it is. So we want to see if we can get them to make more of each other. We’re the Kaiju Preservation Society. We’re gonna try to preserve some kaiju.”

“And how is that going so far?” Kahurangi asked.

“Not great! This is try number five.” Satie jerked his head back toward the canisters. “Dr. Pham’s been tweaking the formula as we’ve gone along. That’s why you’re here, Dr. Lautagata. You get to tell her how Ed reacts to this version.”

“How did he react the first four times?”

“Various sorts of pissed off, mostly.”

“That’s not good.”

“It’s not, but I’m a good pilot. The helicopter usually doesn’t take any damage.”

“Usually,” Kahurangi said, looking at me deadpan as he did so.

“The last version was almost there. Doc said she definitely saw evidence of a tumescent cloaca.”

I laughed.

“What’s got you chuckling?” Satie said.

“I was just thinking that Edward’s Tumescent Cloaca would have been an excellent band name.”

“Emo, obviously,” Kahurangi said.

“Their first album glistened with promise, but their follow-up was a little flaccid.”

“Their third album was really shitty.”

“To be fair, the competition was stiff that year.”

“I just thought that they should have showed more spunk.”

I was going to add more to this terrible, disgraceful conversation, but then we crested a hill and I got my first look at Edward.

“Holy shit,” I said.

Satie grinned. “Cute like a panda, right?”

Kahurangi made a noise at this. “Mate, if you think that’s cute, you’ve been on this planet too long.”

“Seconded,” I said. “That thing looks like H. P. Lovecraft’s panic attack.”

Satie nodded. “Wait ’til you see his cloaca.”

“We’re not actually going to see his cloaca, are we?” Kahurangi asked.

“Dr. Lautagata, by the time we’re done, there’s not much of Edward we won’t see.”

“How close are we going to get?” I asked.

“Pretty close.”

“Is that absolutely necessary?” Kahurangi asked.

“Did you put missiles on my helicopter?” Satie asked him. “Filled with pheromones?”

“No.”

“Then it’s absolutely necessary. Don’t worry, Doctor. Getting up close to him is the easy part. It’s the getting away that’s going to be the trick.”





CHAPTER

10




“Why isn’t he eating us?” I asked. We were now close enough to Edward that this was not an entirely irrelevant question.

“He’s asleep,” Satie said.

I glanced over at him. “Asleep?”

“They sleep, yup.”

“How can you tell when he’s asleep?”

“He’s not eating us, for one,” Satie said. “You can’t see his eyes, for another.”

I looked out at Edward. “He has eyes?”

“We call them eyes. I’m sure by now someone explained to you how it’s all more complicated than that. Trust me, you’ll know them when you see them.”

“No real eyes, but an actual cloaca,” Kahurangi said, from the back.

“I don’t design them, I just fly to them,” Satie replied.

“Well, let’s douse this thing with pheromones and go,” I said. I kept looking at Edward not being awake and was reasonably certain awake would be a bowel-loosening state.

Satie shook his head. “Not how it works. We spray now, he’ll just sleep through them. Then Dr. Lautagata will have nothing to report, and Dr. Pham will be angry with you.”

“I’m willing to lie,” Kahurangi said.

“Today’s your first day on the job, so I’ll tell you something you don’t know, which is you don’t cross Dr. Pham,” Satie said. “She will come for you in the night, son. This is a tip I am giving you for free.”

“She seems pretty nice.”

“She is nice. Wonderful person. And also if you lie to her about these pheromones, she will gut you and leave you for the tree crabs.”