The Great Zoo of China Read online

  While the others marvelled at the ready-made city outside the valley, CJ gazed out at a nearby, smaller pinnacle to the east.

  A gigantic grey emperor dragon lounged on a ledge high up on the peak. Flanked by a few grey princes, it turned suddenly and looked right at CJ, right into her eyes.

  Hu Tang caught her looking.

  ‘Dr Cameron,’ he said gently. ‘Are you all right? Is there something worrying you?’ He seemed genuinely concerned. ‘Are you perhaps ready to ask your question?’

  CJ turned to find the whole table looking at her expectantly. It seemed as if everyone was interested in hearing her question. She made eye contact with Greg Johnson: he seemed especially attentive.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘But you might not like it.’

  ‘Please,’ Hu encouraged. ‘We are happy to answer any query you might have.’

  ‘All right,’ CJ said, turning fully in her chair. ‘Mr Hu, exactly how many people have your dragons killed so far?’

  Hu looked like he had been slapped in the face. ‘How many—what? How many people have they killed? Why would you ask that?’

  ‘Because from everything you’ve told us so far, this animal is perhaps the greatest predator this world has ever seen,’ CJ said. ‘Everything about it indicates that it is a killing machine with no equal on this planet except for perhaps the Great White Shark.’

  She counted off on her fingers: ‘Deep broad nostrils for sniffing out prey. Those ampullae on its snout, they don’t just sniff out electricity, they are designed to detect the bioelectrical distress emitted by the rapid beating of a wounded animal’s heart. Those wings are for chasing prey, those claws are for grabbing prey and those fangs are for eating prey.

  ‘Evolution is a master craftsman, Mr Hu. Over millions of years, it has designed this creature for one purpose and one purpose only: to be an apex predator. Given their size, these dragons could be more than that: they could be the ultimate apex predator. They are built to do three things: hunt, kill and eat. Like crocodiles and alligators, that is what they do. That is why they exist. And these animals are smart: hell, you’ve managed to train a few of them. Hence my question. How many people have they killed already?’

  Hu Tang did not say anything at first. He pursed his lips.

  ‘None,’ he said stiffly. ‘There has not been a single injury or fatality at this zoo caused by a dragon. And we intend to keep it that way.’

  ‘Really?’ CJ said, cocking her head. ‘Mr Hu, putting a couple of electromagnetic domes over this valley is a very sensible idea. But putting little sonic shields on all the vehicles, buildings and people makes me think that your dragons have attacked the vehicles, buildings and people before. In fact, if these animals respect those domes and shields then by definition it means they have been stung by them in the past. Animals don’t fear electromagnetic domes and sonic shields because they can see them. They fear them because they’ve been hurt by them. Are you seriously telling me that your dragons have only taken the odd snap at a truck or building and not a human being?’

  ‘Yes, that is what I am telling you,’ Hu said with a straight face.

  CJ stared back at him. ‘Right. So it’s like Chinese GDP figures, then.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  After dessert was served, the group returned to the cable car and resumed their aerial circuit of the zoo.

  Departing Dragon Mountain, the cable car ventured eastward, passing through the smaller pinnacle that CJ had seen earlier, before turning north again.

  Hamish nudged CJ and pointed off to the right. There, nestled atop a chasm cut into the eastern wall of the crater, was an enormous monastery built in the style of the old Taoist monasteries found in central China.

  This one had three levels, all with pointed roofs and wide balconies overlooking the high chasm. A pack of yellowjacket dragons had taken up residence in it: an emperor, two kings and one prince lay on its broad balconies.

  Zhang said, ‘Our monastery is obviously a homage to the famous Purple Cloud Temple in the Wudang mountains of Hubei province.’

  ‘Obviously,’ Hamish said, raising his camera to take a few shots.

  Moving away from the side-chasm, the cable car began a gradual descent that brought it low over a long straight waterfall.

  Several large rocks protruded from the waterfall’s lip, while some flat-topped rock ledges jutted out from the face of the falling curtain of water. On these rocks and ledges sat a dozen olive-green prince-sized dragons.

  ‘Green river dragons,’ Zhang said. ‘They love the water. We can’t keep them out of it.’

  Voices in the master control room, speaking into radios:

  ‘North waterfall team, stand by. Guests are en route.’

  ‘North waterfall team, ready.’

  ‘Prepare for fish release. In three, two, one . . .’

  The cable car passed across the face of the waterfall, level with its lip, within twenty feet of the olive-green river dragons on the ledges—when suddenly the dragons saw something in the water and they leapt into it with whip cracks of their tails.

  ‘Look how fast they go!’ Perry exclaimed.

  CJ was thinking the same thing. They had moved with astonishing speed, far faster than any crocodilian she had seen.

  The cable car moved past the waterfall, now rising higher again, and CJ glimpsed the freeway-like ring road that ran around the circumference of the valley. It was artfully concealed, disappearing every now and then into tunnels cut into the rock wall.

  Shortly after passing the waterfall, the cable car arrived at an open-air station that serviced a hotel-like building at the northern end of the valley. Flashing lights blared WELCOME TO THE DRAGON’S TAIL CASINO!

  It reminded CJ of the Bellagio in Las Vegas: it had beige walls, immense columns and Italian-style windows.

  The cable car, however, did not stop at the casino. It only slowed as it passed through the station before continuing on, gliding around the northern edge of the lake, moving past a second broad waterfall which also had river dragons perched on rock ledges jutting out from its lip and face.

  As their cable car moved away from the second waterfall, CJ saw four silver Range Rovers emerge from a garage at the base of the casino building and speed along a gravel road that ran parallel to their cable car.

  Hamish saw them, too. ‘Nice wheels. Range Rover Sport.’

  They could just make out the occupants of the cars: the four Chinese Party men in their freshly bought outdoorsmen outfits.

  ‘The big kahunas,’ Hamish observed.

  The four silver Range Rovers zoomed alongside the cable car for a short time, kicking up dust clouds behind them, before their road curved northward and they peeled away. Their gravel road, CJ saw, wrapped around some dramatic cliffs—covered with dragons—that formed a kind of natural screen in front of the northwestern corner of the crater.

  CJ stopped herself.

  It wasn’t a natural screen at all. This entire valley had been sculpted by thousands of Chinese workers for the specific purpose of building a tourist playground. Those cliffs—and the screen they formed—were there for a reason.

  ‘Looks like the big shots are on a very different tour from us,’ she said.

  Hamish turned to Zhang. ‘Yo, Zhangman. Where are those dudes going?’

  Zhang smiled. ‘Our esteemed Party officials are about to enjoy a very special section of our zoo, which you will see later. Forgive me if I don’t tell you what it is now. I don’t want to ruin the surprise.’

  ‘Oh, okay. Cool,’ Hamish said.

  Everyone else in the cable car was focused on the dragons on the dramatic cliffs. The cliffs, CJ thought, had been well designed: the dragons lay on high ledges or sat perched on striking peaks. It seized the attention. It was a postcard shot and Hamish duly took many photos of it.

  While all this was happening, the cable car travelled over a broad swamp filled with reeds and, it appeared,
many large crocodiles.

  ‘Why the crocodiles?’ CJ asked Zhang.

  Zhang said, ‘Crocodiles are the only surviving members of the archosaur line in the modern world. Large crocs lived back in the Triassic Period. We thought having some of them around would be good for the dragons: a reminder of the world they used to live in.’

  ‘Those are saltwater crocs,’ CJ said, ‘which means that’s a saltwater swamp. I thought you said your dragons don’t like salt water.’

  ‘They don’t.’

  ‘But that swamp adjoins the lake and there are dragons in the lake. How does that work?’

  ‘Well spotted, Dr Cameron,’ Zhang said. ‘We cheated a little. You can’t see it, but just below the waterline is a Perspex barrier that separates the saltwater swamp from the freshwater lake.’

  ‘Do the crocs ever venture out into the lake?’ Perry asked.

  ‘The larger ones do, but not the smaller ones,’ Zhang said. ‘The dragons, on the other hand, always avoid the swamp. They hate it. When it comes to salt water, they’re like cats: precious and fussy.’

  When it was about halfway across the swamp, the cable car turned southward and soared grandly out over the lake, travelling twenty feet above the surface.

  It was now heading back down the western side of the valley. CJ saw the enormous main building way off in the distance ahead of them, dominating the southern end of the valley, perhaps ten kilometres away.

  On the nearby western wall of the crater, she saw about twenty dragons of various sizes—but all clustered in small groups of the same colour—alternately sitting on or moving around the crater’s rocky wall.

  The voices from the master control room came through a tiny earpiece in Hu Tang’s ear:

  ‘Western wall team, stand by. Guests are en route.’

  ‘Western wall team, ready.’

  ‘Prepare for horse release, in five, four, three . . .’

  Hu Tang knew that his zoo was a wonder beyond compare. But these were influential American journalists and he didn’t want them reporting that his dragons just lazed around, doing nothing.

  Sometimes you had to make the animals perform.

  Gliding along in the cable car, CJ again saw the ring road, disappearing into and reappearing from tunnels in the mountainside.

  Then she saw something that made her start.

  It was so well camouflaged, she almost missed it.

  On the sheer black cliff above the ring road, CJ saw a lone dragon, a large red-bellied black king, crouched in a very unusual position. The dragon clung to the cliff on its belly, perfectly vertical but upside-down: its head pointed downward while its barbed tail was pointed upward.

  The animal was the size of a subway carriage and it did not move. It just lay there, eerily still.

  CJ frowned. She was about to ask Zhang about it when sudden movement caught her eye.

  Four yellowjacket princes burst out of some trees below the ring road, chasing a group of six wild horses across the hillside. The horses galloped hard, blasting between the trees, fleeing for their lives. The dragons ran swiftly and easily, with the cool agility of big cats. With their tails raised, their heads bent low and their muscular limbs bouncing over the uneven landscape with ease, they looked like oversized leopards.

  Then suddenly two of the dragons took flight, flanking the horses, herding them to the right where—

  —two more princes sprang from a cave and crash-tackled the first two horses with crunching, side-on hits.

  ‘Ow!’ Hamish yelled.

  The two horses—who themselves must have weighed 800 kilograms each—shrieked as they went down, hoofs flailing, heads turning from side to side, eyes bulging with fear.

  The two ambushing dragons were on them in seconds, wrapping their oversized jaws around the horses’ necks, crushing their windpipes. The horses stopped struggling, went still.

  At this point, the other four yellowjackets arrived. But they did not engage in a feeding frenzy on the carcasses of the horses. Instead, the four chasers waited a short distance away as the two ambushers took the first bites out of the fallen victims.

  CJ watched, entranced.

  ‘They’re like wolves,’ she said. ‘Wolves observe a strict hierarchy, both in the hunt and in the feeding that follows. The junior pack members drive the prey into the ambush, where the senior members wait. The senior members—an alpha male and an alpha female—carry out the kill. They always eat first. Then the juniors take their turn.’

  CJ saw one of the senior dragons bite down on the carcass of one of the horses. It tore off the dead animal’s head with one mighty rip.

  Ambassador Syme stepped up beside CJ, staring in awe at the bloody scene.

  ‘You don’t see that on the National Geographic channel,’ he said in a whisper.

  The cable car continued on its journey over the western lake.

  Up ahead of it was the ruined castle. The castle stood beside a third and final waterfall which curved in a wide U-shape. From where she stood, CJ could only see the lip of the waterfall dropping away like the rim of an infinity pool.

  Above and behind the castle, however, was a far more modern structure: a fifteen-storey glass-faced building that sat half-embedded in the sloping wall of the crater.

  Just below the point where the building’s lowest floor met the hill, CJ saw a tunnel that allowed the ring road to burrow into the slope. She guessed that there was some kind of internal entry to the building inside the tunnel.

  At the top of the glass building was a sleek white tower that looked like an air traffic control tower. It had many large radio antennas sticking up from it.

  ‘What’s that building?’ CJ asked Zhang.

  ‘That is our administration building,’ Zhang said. ‘Running a zoo of this size is like running a small city. The administration building houses all of our admin and support staff. Its lower floors contain loading docks that receive all the building materials that come into the zoo as well as coordinating waste management and disposal.’

  ‘And the tower at the top?’

  ‘Dragon monitoring and observation,’ Zhang replied, a little too quickly and casually.

  CJ noticed.

  ‘Does it have anything to do with the electromagnetic domes?’ she asked. ‘I mean, you wouldn’t want one of the bigger dragons to accidentally crash into it and knock out your dome.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Zhang said. ‘The inner dome emanates from twenty-four concrete emplacements built into the rim of the crater. You can see them up there, beside the tower. Each is heavily reinforced; the concrete is nine feet thick. The dragons couldn’t damage them if they tried.’

  CJ put on her oversized sunglasses and looked up at the rim.

  Through the glasses, she saw the curving luminescent green rays of the inner dome lancing skyward from a series of emplacements on the crater’s upper rim. They looked like World War II pillboxes: supersolid concrete blockhouses with slit-like apertures from which the dome’s beams sprang upward.

  She shrugged and took off the glasses and was turning back to look at the administration building when she spied a group of vehicles speeding out from the ring road tunnel at its base.

  It was a convoy of five petrol-tanker trucks: eighteen-wheelers with long silver tanks on their backs. The tankers rumbled north along the ring road before disappearing into another tunnel.

  ‘Deputy Director, what is that?’ CJ heard Hu whisper harshly to Zhang in Mandarin.

  ‘It’s the two o’clock fuel run,’ Zhang said. ‘They’re taking diesel to the cable car stations and the generators.’

  Hu hissed, ‘The drivers should have been informed that we had visitors today. Remember what the Disney consultants said: visitors should never see the backroom machinery at work. Never. Make sure those drivers and their supervisors are disciplined.’

  CJ didn’t outwardly acknowledge their words. They must have forgotten she spoke Mandarin.

  A deafening roar made her and everyone
else in the cable car spin.

  CJ’s eyes went wide.

  An emperor dragon was hovering right alongside the cable car!

  It kept itself aloft with the occasional flap of its vast wings and it peered curiously into the cable car.

  CJ hadn’t even heard it approach. She couldn’t believe the sheer size of it. It defied the senses to see something so big hovering in the air. And it thrilled her to be able to see it so close.

  The great beast roared again, an ear-piercing shriek that seemed to shake the whole valley.

  It was a red-bellied black dragon. Its underbelly blazed scarlet. Its black plated armour looked strong beyond belief. When it roared, its teeth flashed.

  CJ noticed that it was looking closely at her and her companions, as if evaluating them.

  CJ found herself admiring it. Curiosity in an animal was a sign of intelligence and it was rare. You found it only in a few members of the animal kingdom: chimpanzees, gorillas, dolphins.

  Her eyes swept up the curve of the great beast’s neck and she gazed at its fearsome head. Its eyes were a pitiless black. The sinews of its jaws were stretched taut. Its crest was sleek and sinister, while the rest of its massive head was covered in ugly scars and gashes, presumably from fights with other dragons—

  CJ frowned.

  Wait a second . . .

  Something about this dragon’s head didn’t look right, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

  Suddenly, with a final hideous screech, the massive creature beat its wings and banked away, flying off to the north, and everyone in the cable car started murmuring with wonder.

  Shortly after, the cable car came to the great ruined castle. When she’d seen it before from the main building, CJ thought it hadn’t looked so big, but now she realised that that had been a trick of the distance.

  Seen from up close, it was absolutely enormous: dark, grim and imposing.

  ‘We got the production designer from the Lord of the Rings movies to design this castle,’ Hu said to Wolfe. Hu seemed a little standoffish toward CJ now.