The Great Zoo of China (38 page)

A voice replied, ‘
I’m sorry, sir. But the beasts have knocked out all of our choppers.
’

‘Then send a fucking car!’ Bao barked. ‘A jeep, a truck, anything! I have to get to the secondary command post at the airfield! Bao, out.’

He clicked off. ‘Damn it. I can regain control of the zoo from the airfield, but it’ll take us at least an hour to get there by car.
Fuck
.’

‘Then let’s go,’ Hu said, and the two of them took off down the long, dark concrete tunnel, one of the few tunnels that led out of the Great Dragon Zoo of China.

C
J dreamed.

Bizarre images flashed across her mind. She saw herself flying high above the world. Then she saw the face of a yellowjacket emperor dragon, impossibly huge, staring at her from very close range, opening its jaws—

CJ’s eyes darted open.

To find a yellowjacket emperor dragon staring at her from
very
close range.

She started, but the dragon didn’t attack. It was lying very casually in front of her, its chin resting on the ground, just watching her.

For a moment, CJ wondered if she was still dreaming.

Looking about herself, she was in what could only be described as another world: she lay on a wooden stage inside an ancient-looking monastery high up in some kind of chasm.

A wide wooden doorway opened before her, revealing a broad balcony that looked out at a second sky-temple mounted on the opposite side of the chasm.

It was still night and it was still raining. CJ didn’t know how much time had passed since she had blacked out.

Completing the fantastical nature of the image were the dragons.

She was surrounded by a small group of yellowjackets, five of them, forming a tight ring around her—the emperor, two kings and two princes.

Like the emperor, all the others were staring very intently and curiously at CJ.

One of the princes stepped forward, easily distinguishable from the other dragons by virtue of the saddle on her back: Lucky.

As CJ looked at them all more closely, however, she began to see that each yellow-and-black dragon bore unique patterns on its face and neck. No two dragons had the same markings.

Lucky came up to CJ and, to CJ’s great surprise, bowed her head.

CJ leaned back, confused.

Lucky brayed a series of low burring sounds from deep within her throat.

CJ looked from Lucky to the other yellowjacket dragons, unsure what was going on.

Lucky turned to the other dragons, apparently equally confused. She threw a meaningful look at one of the watching kings. The king growled deeply, a noise that sounded profoundly unimpressed.

Lucky turned back to CJ and repeated the sequence of low brays.

Lucky stepped up close to CJ so that her toothy snout was right in front of CJ’s face.

CJ remained stock still, not daring to move. The yellowjacket’s fangs looked deadly.

And then Lucky nudged the earpiece in CJ’s ear.

CJ frowned. The earpiece. The one she had taken from the body of Lucky’s handler back in the waste management facility when she had rescued Lucky from Red Face’s gang.

CJ touched the earpiece. ‘What are you trying to tell me . . . ?’

Then she saw the metal implant on the side of Lucky’s head, the box-shaped one that had been painted yellow and black to camouflage it against the dragon’s skin, the one trailing a small but distinct wire that disappeared into Lucky’s skull.

‘No way . . .’ CJ breathed. ‘The Chinese figured out a way to communicate with you . . .’

A flurry of thoughts and images came together in her mind:

Yim, the dragon handler, giving commands to Lucky and Red Face during the trick show.

Ben Patrick saying: ‘—
I have a database of over three hundred separate and identifiable vocalisations—Every squawk and screech you hear has meaning—
’

And the garbled electronic female voice CJ had heard through that earpiece after she had rescued Lucky from Red Face and his gang:

‘—
Run
. . .
White head
. . .
Run
—’

And the male voice she’d heard before that: ‘—
black dragons attack
—’ And the same voice she’d heard when Melted Face had shrieked at her: ‘—
Fear
. . .
me
—’

Even the way Lucky had growled and grunted at Red Face and his gang in the cable car tunnel. It had been communication, deliberate and articulate
communication
.

Holy shit . . .

During the crazy chase in the pick-up truck, CJ had thought the strange voices coming through her earpiece had been crossed signals from other radios in the zoo; the voices of workers panicking in the face of the attacks.

But now as CJ’s gaze fell on the metallic box grafted onto the side of Lucky’s head, she had a different idea.

The female voice had been Lucky.

The male voice: Melted Face.

Those metallic boxes on their heads were indeed implants of some sort—implants connected to the dragons’ brains and larynxes, implants fitted with state-of-the-art data chips that somehow translated their grunts, squawks and coos into language. The Chinese had even had the sense to use separate male and female voices for the different dragons, a small but clever touch.

By the look of it, however, not all the dragons at the zoo had such implants. Only the performing ones: Lucky and Red Face and his gang. None of the other four yellowjackets surrounding CJ right now had implants on the sides of their heads.

CJ pulled out her earpiece and looked at it.

It was set to channel 4. CJ recalled switching it to that channel so she could speak with Hamish and Zhang in the garbage truck.

She tried to remember what channel it had been set to before then.

‘22 . . .’ she said aloud. She flicked the dial on the earpiece to 22.

She looked up at Lucky and—despite herself, despite thinking that this was absolutely crazy—she nodded.

Lucky cooed and mewled . . .

. . . and the electronic female voice once again came through CJ’s earpiece, speaking in Mandarin.

It said, ‘
Hello . . . White Head . . . Me . . . Lucky.
’

C
J almost fainted. Her mouth fell open in shock.

This was incredible.

She wasn’t sure how the translation system worked, but it must have been extraordinarily complex.

She guessed a sensor was probably connected directly to Lucky’s voicebox; it detected the dragon’s utterances, correlated them with Ben Patrick’s database of known dragon sounds and then sent the translation via a computerised voice to CJ’s earpiece. The implant in the dragon’s brain must also reverse the process, so the dragon could understand people.

Such a device would have taken years to develop and refine; thousands of man-hours just to tabulate and interpret all the different dragon calls. But Ben Patrick, with the full resources of China behind him, had done just that.

It took CJ a moment to regather herself and reply.

‘Er . . . hello, Lucky,’ she said in Mandarin.

Lucky reared back, eyes widening. Her pointy-eared head was surprisingly expressive. Her eyes were sharp and focused intently on CJ. Her ears folded backwards like a dog’s: a very pleased expression.

The dragon, by all appearances, was delighted that progress had just been made.

Lucky squawked at the other dragons, turning specifically to the two kings—even though there was an emperor-sized dragon in the pack, they, it seemed, were its leaders. They grunted back with low growls.

Lucky faced CJ again and cooed.

The earpiece translated: ‘
Lucky say . . . White Head . . . good human.
’

‘White Head?’ CJ frowned.

And then she realised: it was her hair, her blonde hair. In a world of black-haired Chinese, Lucky had given her a perfectly obvious name: White Head.

‘Oh. Right.’ She ventured a complimentary reply, using the simplest Mandarin syntax she could think of: ‘White Head say . . . Lucky . . . good dragon.’

Lucky’s ears flew back again, her eyes positively beaming.

This is trippy
, CJ thought. She was communicating with a dragon.

Lucky barked and mewled quickly. ‘
Red dragons want kill Lucky . . . White Head help Lucky . . . White Head good human
. . .’

‘Ah-ha . . .’ CJ said, understanding.

Lucky may well have saved CJ just now, but CJ had saved Lucky first: from Red Face’s gang inside the waste management facility. Lucky had been repaying a debt.

‘Well, thanks anyway,’ she said.

Lucky cooed. ‘
Lucky no understand White Head.
’

‘Never mind,’ CJ said.

Now that she was talking with the dragon—and she was surprised how quickly she accepted this—CJ started to think about other things.

‘Lucky, what is happening now?’

‘
Lucky no understand White Head.
’

CJ kicked herself. She needed to use simpler language, no what’s, why’s or now’s, just simple nouns and verbs. She wondered if the translator might work with English—it
was
a translation program after all; also, given Ben Patrick’s involvement in its development, she figured it was a distinct possibility. So she said in English: ‘Red dragons kill humans.’

Lucky seemed to comprehend that, and the electronic voice switched to English. ‘
Red dragons bad dragons . . . Like kill humans . . . Like kill dragons
. . .’

‘And yellow dragons?’

‘
Yellow dragons good dragons . . . Yellow dragons like sleep . . . eat
. . .’

‘I’m beginning to like you yellow dragons,’ CJ said, smiling.

‘
Lucky no understand White Head.
’

‘Never mind.’

CJ asked, ‘Red dragons want fly away?’

‘
Red dragons want release red masters
. . .’

‘Red masters?’ CJ said, frowning. She didn’t know what that meant. ‘Red masters . . . emperors?’

Lucky said, ‘
No . . . Master dragon big big dragon . . . Two red masters . . . Two yellow masters . . . Two purple masters . . . Two grey masters . . . Two green masters . . . One master strong strong emperor . . . one master strong strong king
.
Black heads hold masters . . . in nest.
’

CJ tried to process what she had just heard.

If she was White Head, then ‘black heads’ must mean the Chinese. She also guessed that the repeated words ‘big big’ and ‘strong strong’ meant
extra
large and
extra
strong.

She didn’t like the sound of this.

The notion of some kind of master dragon that was bigger and stronger than the other dragons wasn’t that surprising: it was common in the animal kingdom, from queen bees to lions. If she was interpreting Lucky correctly, each variety of dragon had two of these master dragons, one supersized emperor and one supersized king.

More worrying, however, was the idea that the Chinese were keeping them captive in the ‘nest’, which she translated as the Nesting Centre.

The Chinese knew they were special and so had kept them there, separated from the other dragons.

CJ remembered the guards at the Nesting Centre during the first attack: even in those extreme circumstances, they had flatly denied Zhang and her group entry.

This was why the Nesting Centre had been strictly off-limits.

CJ also recalled the image of the Nesting Centre she had seen earlier, with the pairs of dragons lined up neatly in a row: they must have been the master dragons.

But perhaps, she wondered, the Chinese had underestimated how special the master dragons were: it seemed the red-bellied black dragons now wanted to release their masters, perhaps even more than they wanted to escape from the zoo.

‘Masters are very strong dragons?’ CJ asked.

‘
Master dragons strong strong dragons . . . big big . . . spit fire
. . .’

‘Wait, what?’ CJ said, shocked. ‘These dragons can breathe fire?’

‘
Master dragons spit fire . . . Fire help dig . . . Fire kill dragons
.’