Matthew Reilly - The Great Zoo of China

Hu frowned, confused—and even a little offended—but he regathered himself and turned to the others.

‘Ah, look, we’re arriving at Dragon Mountain,’ he said.

The cable car had indeed arrived at the tunnel that bored into the mighty central mountain. The great peak loomed above them.

‘Let us go inside and I shall answer all of your questions over lunch.’

The cable car disappeared inside the mountain.

Inside the mountain, the cable car stopped at a station cut into the very heart of the peak.

The station’s walls were natural rock, gunmetal grey in colour, and they had been sculpted into enormous dragon shapes—it looked as if the dragons were emerging from the walls in frightening attack poses, jaws open, claws bared.

Since the cable cars were double-deckers, the platform of the station had two levels, too. A modern grated catwalk led from the upper deck of the cable car to the upper doors of a huge double-levelled elevator.

A group of Chinese workers was there, standing near the elevator. Seeing the arrival of the cable car with its VIP guests, they stopped their labours and stood to attention in a line, waiting for the visitors to pass.

CJ figured they were electricians, judging by their work belts, coveralls and the clusters of naked wires protruding from the walls.

The youngest of the workmen had clearly gathered his tools together in a hurry, for he held them awkwardly against his chest, and as CJ’s group passed him by, the poor fellow dropped his bundle with a loud clatter. A screwdriver, some pliers and about thirty metal clips scattered all over the floor.

The group walked on, but as they did, CJ turned and she saw the foreman strike the young electrician across the face, hissing in Mandarin, ‘Idiot! Not in front of the guests!’

CJ flinched. Such a thing would never happen back home, but in China it was still common for low-level workers to be beaten. She went back and, crouching beside the young electrician, began helping him pick up the many metal clips.

‘I am sorry,’ he whispered in English, bowing his head repeatedly. ‘So sorry. So sorry.’

‘It’s okay,’ CJ said, picking up clips. ‘What’s your name?’

‘My name is Li, ma’am.’

‘Take it easy, Li. It’s all right. It was an accident. You haven’t offended anyone or made the zoo look bad.’

Sweating, Li nodded in thanks, but a fearful glance at the foreman suggested that things wouldn’t be good for him after CJ and the others left. CJ picked up the last clip and the floor was clean.

She headed off, but as she walked past the foreman, she whispered casually in Mandarin: ‘You touch that man again and I’ll have you fired. You understand?’

The foreman blanched in shock.

CJ rejoined the group at the elevator just as Hu was saying, ‘To answer Mr Wolfe’s question: we have 232 dragons here at the zoo: 31 emperors, 81 kings and 120 princes. They range in age from thirty-five years to infants that are only a few months old, but don’t let that fool you. Dragons grow fast. A month-old prince is the size of a lion. At six months, it is as tall as a man. It is full-sized at a year, but immature, so it will defer to its seniors.’

They entered the elevator and CJ felt it zoom smoothly upward. The manufacturer’s plate by the doors showed it was German made. It hardly made a sound.

Zhang said, ‘To answer Mr Cameron’s question from before regarding their eating habits: our dragons are omnivorous; they eat both meat and vegetable matter. The emperors are mostly herbivorous, like their large dinosaur forebears, while the kings and princes are predominantly carnivorous.’

‘What do you feed them?’ Wolfe asked.

‘Sheep and cows mainly,’ Zhang said simply. ‘We have a farming facility adjoining this valley, where we breed the dietary requirements for our dragons. As you can imagine, they require substantial amounts of meat, so our farming system works around the clock.’

Hu said, ‘Mr Cameron also asked if they fight each other. They most certainly do, but in a very unusual and rather ritualistic way that we have termed “jousting”. Two dragons will face off and fly directly at each other. As they pass, claws are extended and one dragon usually comes away the better. We have found that such battles usually occur over—’

‘Territory,’ CJ said.

‘Yes. Yes, that’s right,’ Hu said. ‘Territorial disputes. We considered attempting to segregate the dragons in order to stop the practice, but they eventually established their own territories and the jousting largely stopped.’

Perry asked, ‘And how did you manage to build this place without anyone knowing?’

Hu said, ‘Simple. We told the truth. You saw the sign at the maglev station reading: “Welcome to the Great Zoo of China”. There have been many others like it. In addition to telling every worker who worked on this project that they were building an enormous zoo, we created a whole set of logos and letterheads which featured on every sign, every truck, and on every invoice with every contractor who worked on this place. We gave them T-shirts and caps emblazoned with the fake logo of the Great Zoo of China. While they toiled, the dragons were sequestered underground in the Birthing and Nesting centres, so no worker ever saw a dragon.

‘Only the most trusted contractors were shown the dragons: those who were working on security features like the electromagnetic domes and the sonic shields, and of course the experts who helped us analyse the dragons’ behaviour.’

‘What about satellites?’ Wolfe asked, turning to the American ambassador, Syme. ‘What did America think was going on here?’

Syme turned to Hu and a look passed between them, the look of two men who knew the realities of international politics.

Syme said evenly, ‘In November 1979, all this land and the air above it was designated restricted military airspace. This whole valley is technically a military site subject to military laws.’

Syme gave Hu another look and the Chinese Politburo member nodded in return. Their two nations, vying to be the world’s dominant power, knew all of each other’s secrets, or at least most of them.

Syme said, ‘Until today, the United States government didn’t know the significance of that date. We knew of the sonic shields—but we use them ourselves at air force bases for cellular jamming, so we figured the Chinese were just doing the same thing. And since no major aircraft or missile technology was tested here, it wasn’t seen as a particularly special base. We processed the visas of the animal experts they brought in but then we saw the Great Zoo of China paraphernalia and I guess, well, we fell for it, too.’

The elevator pinged and the doors opened onto an elegant room high above the valley. The room was perfectly circular, with curved and slanted floor-to-ceiling windows that offered unobstructed views of the megavalley.

It was, CJ realised, the interior of the disc-shaped structure at the summit of the central mountain, or Dragon Mountain, as Hu had called it.

And it was indeed a revolving restaurant. Well-appointed tables and chairs had been arranged on four broad descending tiers so that every table had a view over the valley. Only the central section of the structure stood still; the tiers all revolved at a slow pace around it.

‘There is a second identical restaurant on the level below us,’ Hu said. ‘Guests who ride up in the lower half of this elevator get out there.’

Outside, dragons swooped and banked. It was like dining at the top of the Eiffel Tower, high in the sky, with only the clouds and the dragons for company.