Matthew Reilly - The Great Zoo of China

49

CJ 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 .’

‘Oh my God.’

‘ Lucky no understand White Head. ’

CJ didn’t like the sound of this at all. She tried a different angle. ‘Dragons want… to kill? To fly? To be free?’

Lucky seemed to ponder this.

‘ Dragons want… open big big nest …’

CJ frowned. ‘Big big nest?’

Lucky brayed again. The earpiece translated: ‘ Two nests… Small nest, big nest… Dragons sleep long long time… Lucky nest small nest… Small nest open… Small nest dragons go big big nest… Open big big nest …’

The blood drained from CJ’s face.

‘Are you telling me that there is another dragon nest in this area? A bigger one? And that the nest at this zoo is actually a small one?’

‘ Lucky no understand White Head. ’

CJ stepped out of the monastery building, striding past the pack of yellowjacket dragons. She peered across the dark, rain-flecked megavalley in the direction of the Nesting Centre.

Then she remembered something: the battlefield display unit in her thigh pocket.

She pulled it out and looked at it. It must have been connected to some external data system—perhaps a satellite or, more likely, the military airfield outside the valley—because it was still working despite the loss of power inside the zoo.

With the falling of the inner dome, however, it had changed completely:

Whereas before most of the red crosses had been clustered around the administration building, now they were converging on the Nesting Centre. The red-bellied black dragons were going for their masters.

At the top right-hand corner of the image, grey dragons were fleeing en masse from the valley, heading off to the northeast.

As she gazed in horror at the map, a question formed in CJ’s mind.

The red-bellied black dragons had led the initial attacks. And now they were descending upon the Nesting Centre. They were driving all this and they clearly weren’t finished.