Matthew Reilly - The Great Zoo of China

At that moment, CJ saw a cable car emerge from within the main building directly beneath the control room. The cable car did indeed have a small plastic snub antenna on its roof, similar to the ones you saw on expensive cars. Through her glasses, she saw the pale blue sphere around the vehicle.

‘So it’s the same sort of thing as the domes above the valley?’ Wolfe asked.

‘No,’ Zhang said. ‘The domes are electromagnetic. The personal shields are ultrasonic. Since our dragons come into contact with our cars and buildings far more regularly than they do the electromagnetic domes, the smaller sonic shields give them a jolt that is not as devastating as the one they would receive from the domes. The sonic shields will shoo a dragon away; the electromagnetic domes will knock them out.’

The group nodded.

‘Come now,’ Hu said, smiling. ‘Enough of these lectures. It’s time to get on board one of our state-of-the-art cable cars and see the Great Dragon Zoo!’

Leaving the master control room, the group took a glass elevator down a few more floors, arriving at a high-ceilinged hall that looked like a train station. Only this was no train station.

First, it opened onto thin air. It had no northern wall. The platform at that end just dropped away, a full three hundred feet to the floor of the megavalley.

And second, the ‘carriage’ parked beside the platform didn’t stand on rails. Instead, the huge double-decker carriage hung suspended from a thick overhead cable. It was a cable car, at least thirty metres long, with wide viewing windows that curved up and over its roof. And it looked very modern, all sleek and silver, with the obligatory Great Dragon Zoo of China logo on its flank.

The sturdy cable from which the cable car hung stretched out from the station, lancing across the valley in a dead-straight line, passing through a watchtower-like way station before disappearing into a tunnel bored into the front face of the central mountain out in the middle of the megavalley, several kilometres away.

The group boarded the cable car and it eased out of the station and suddenly they were moving high above the valley.

The ambience inside the cable car was like that of a drawing room: soft music played and, except for the loudest of sounds, outside noise barely crept in. There was a bar at the rear, manned by a Chinese bartender in a bow tie and vest.

Seen from the cable car, the valley took on a whole new level of splendour.

Lucky—with Yim on her back—swooped and glided theatrically around the moving cable car. Yim waved happily. The four red-bellied black dragons from the show banked and flew in wider circles around the car.

Hamish’s camera now sounded like a machine gun, he was taking so many photos.

The dragons flew like alligators swam, CJ saw. Alligators swam with their four limbs tucked close by their bodies while their tails drove them forward. These animals flew with their four walking limbs held tightly against their sides, making them incredibly streamlined, while their wings—many times larger than their bodies—flapped powerfully.

As they made their way along the cable, CJ saw other dragons: gigantic purple royal emperors gliding around the central mountain; olive-green kings lounging on the banks of a river village. They looked like supersized lizards, basking in the sun.

Some king-sized purple royals sat perched atop high rocky crags that lined the cable car’s route. They sat upright, tall and noble, as they watched the cable car slide by. When the cable car passed close enough to one of the dragons, CJ would spot the branded number on the animal’s hind leg.

As the car approached and passed them, the various dragons barked and shrieked at each other, ear-piercing squeals and screams.

‘Not exactly pleasing to the ear, are they?’ Wolfe snorted.

‘Their vocalisations may not be pleasant,’ Zhang said, ‘but they do have meaning. Our dragons employ several different methods to communicate with each other: complex subsonic grunting, for one thing, and body vibrations not unlike those employed by modern alligators. Dr Cameron will be aware of these forms of communication.’

CJ nodded.

Alligators did indeed communicate in this way. Their barks and grunts were both complex and very specific, a kind of guttural language. One of her old colleagues from the University of Florida, Dr Benjamin Patrick, had pioneered the study of alligator vocalisations, going so far as to compile a database of over sixty distinct sounds made by alligators. He had run those vocalisations through a purpose-built supercomputer in an attempt to find similarities and commonalities among them; in effect, to translate their language.

Similar studies had been done with dolphins and chimpanzees. Dolphins were known to vocalise their names when they jumped out of water and packs of chimps had specific grunts that meant ‘leopard’ or ‘hyena’. Patrick’s work with gators had been an attempt to take this to the next level.

Six years older than CJ, Ben Patrick had also been the most handsome guy in the faculty and every woman there had had a crush on him. When he’d asked CJ—fresh out of graduate school and before her disfigurement—on a date, she’d jumped at it. But there had been no second date, because during that single dinner, CJ discovered quite clearly that Ben Patrick loved only one thing: Ben Patrick. He had only talked about himself. It pained her, even now, to recall that one disastrous date.

Arrogant and self-absorbed as he was, CJ had to admit that Patrick was brilliant. His analysis of alligator vocalisations was simply extraordinary. But then about eight years ago, when his research seemed to be hitting a peak, he had suddenly left the university for a much higher paying job at the University of Shanghai. CJ hadn’t seen or heard from him since.

‘A colleague of mine named Ben Patrick once did some excellent work in the field of alligator vocalisations,’ CJ said.

‘He did indeed,’ Hu said, ‘which is why he is working here, right now, at our zoo. His discoveries here have far outstripped the ones he made with alligators. He works in our Birthing Centre. When we stop by there later, hopefully we will run into Dr Patr—’

Suddenly, with a great whoosh-whoosh , two purple emperor dragons swept past the cable car. They were indeed the size of airliners and their fly-by caused the cable car to rock gently and the trees on a nearby crag to bend and flutter.

Everybody grabbed a handhold.

Hu chuckled. ‘It’s okay. These cable cars are the best in the world. Swiss designed. Our emperors don’t realise the wake they make when they fly past.’

CJ whipped around, following with wide eyes the two purple emperors that had swept by.

Their heads alone were simply monstrous in size, as big as a four-wheel drive. Their long teeth, protruding menacingly from their lips, were almost as big as she was.

‘Good God…’ she breathed. ‘Good God.’

The cable car passed through the watchtower-like way station halfway between the main entrance building and the central mountain.

‘We call this the Halfway Hut,’ Na said. ‘There is a café-restaurant above us that offers excellent views and affordable meals. Also, hikers walking along the valley trails can access a cable car here if they run out of breath.’

As his guests watched the dragons, Hu Tang watched them. They seemed to be enjoying the cable car ride. Hu was particularly pleased to see the two New York Times men nod approvingly when Na mentioned the affordable meals at the Halfway Hut. The consultants had said American visitors would like that: having differently priced restaurants to suit people of different levels of wealth.