Godzilla vs. Kong

by Greg Keyes

  Biologists and geographers recognized a famous demarcation called the Wallace Line, separating Borneo and everything west of it from Sulawesi, New Guinea, and Australia—all of which had once been a part of or very near a Greater Australian continent known as Sahul that was now partly submerged. East of the Wallace Line was like an alternate universe, an alternative Earth. A place where things evolved differently. And yet, the genetic roots of everything in Australia could be found, both in the fossil record and in living species, on other continents, most notably South America and Antarctica, to which Sahul had been most recently connected.

  You could trace a similar line around Skull Island. Call it the Lin Line, after the scientist who first formally described much of the island’s flora and fauna. But if the Wallace line seemed to mark a border between what was “normal” in most of the world and the weirdness that was Australia, the plants and animals of Skull Island were a whole different degree of strange. Some looked like odd, often gigantic versions of more widely known animals, but in most cases, these seemed to be cases of convergent evolution, superficial resemblance based on similar adaptations—the way that marsupial moles and placental moles resembled one another, although a placental mole was far more closely related to a whale or a giraffe than to any marsupial. Similarly, though a Skull Island leafwing might superficially resemble a bird, it most decidedly was not.

  And unlike the fauna of Australia, it was sometimes difficult to find any close or even very distant relatives on other continents. Skullcrawlers were an excellent example. Genetic analysis suggested that they split off from the amniote line that led to modern reptiles, birds, and mammals before those groups diverged from one another. Yet besides that very distant reptiliomorph heritage, there were no other fossil or living relatives of the Skullcrawler lineage known from anywhere else on Earth. So how and where had they evolved?

  One obvious answer, the one Ilene herself favored, was to take the Iwi at their word: they had come from beneath, along with the other animal and plant inhabitants of the island. Isolated, Skull Island had made its own, divergent way. Skull Island, she had famously claimed, was like the Hollow Earth brought to the surface.

  When they discovered what was to be charmingly called the “Vile Vortex,” Brooks’s speculations—and her own—had been vindicated. Nathan’s older brother David Lind had become the spearhead of a Monarch expedition to enter Hollow Earth via the Vortex. Nathan, whose theories about Hollow Earth seemed to straddle the plausible and the avant-garde, and who had just published a popular book on the subject, was brought in to consult. It was Nathan who had identified and mathematically described the electrostatic barrier separating the surface of the Earth from the maze of chambers and tunnels underneath, as well as what he called the probability of a “gravity inversion.”

  Things hadn’t gone as planned. Prior to the proposed expedition, the storms that surrounded and protected the island had intensified and begun to creep toward shore. At first, they thought this had something to do with the widespread environmental destruction wrought by Ghidorah, perhaps also linked with climate change, but in blasting the caverns beneath Skull Island—wide enough for planes to go through—they had inadvertently released Camazotz, a bat-like Titan who had apparently “called” the storm to shield it from the sunlight it abhorred. Kong and the pilots training for the Hollow Earth expedition had managed to defeat Camazotz, but the Vortex had been destabilized—and worse, Camazotz had drawn the tempest ashore and sustained it there.

  In any case, Nathan’s dream of finding a path to Earth’s secret depths on Skull Island had been dashed when his brother and two other pilots lost their lives trying to enter the Vortex. Soon after that, Nathan had cut his ties with Monarch. Ilene had made a few attempts to check in on him and how he was doing. None had gotten past a few perfunctory comments, and finally he quit returning her calls and texts entirely. She hated to admit it, but it had been something of a relief; it was hard to watch someone she liked self-destruct.

  And now, suddenly, here he was, requesting a video conference. She had agreed, and after working out their very different time zones, they had set up the call.

  He looked thinner, hollow around the eyes. He’d grown a beard, and not a well-groomed one. His demeanor was more jaded, or perhaps he was simply exhausted.

  “Nathan, you’re looking well,” she lied. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Yeah,” he said, nodding. “It has. I’ve been, you know, busy. Becoming a laughingstock.”

  She sighed. “I haven’t seen you since … well. I wanted to tell you, I think what happened to you was unfair.”

  “I got three people killed,” he said. “One of them was my brother. I lost over a billion dollars in equipment, and I made Monarch look ridiculous. I can’t really blame them for pushing me off the cliff.”

  “Priorities were changing,” she said. “Theoretical work like yours and mine got the shaft. I’m only here because of the investment they made—continue to make—in Kong.”

  “How’s that going?” he asked.

  “There’s a lot I can’t tell you,” she said.

  “How about this?” Nathan said. “I’ll tell you what I already know, and we can go on from there.”

  “Fair enough,” she said, cautiously.

  “I know after the Vortex anchored the off-shore storm to the island, you built a containment facility for Kong.”

  “It’s not a containment facility,” she said. “It’s a biodome. A haven.”

  “So he hasn’t tried to get out?”

  She hesitated, unsure what to say. Instead, she changed the topic.

  “What’s this about, Nathan?”

  “I’ve been offered a job,” he said. “By Walter Simmons. Apex. They want to fund an expedition to Hollow Earth.”

  “Nathan—”

  “I know what happened last time,” he said. “I know how to fix it. The aircraft we used before were not suited to the job. Apex has the goods.”

  “And why are you telling me this, Nathan? You concluded Skull Island wasn’t a viable entry point. The Vortex is too unstable, not to mention the storm.”

  “It isn’t viable,” he said. “But that’s not why I called you.”

  She paused for a moment, trying to read his face.

  “Tell me this doesn’t involve Kong,” she finally said.

  “Do you remember what you wrote about genetic memory?”

  She frowned, ran the sentence over in her mind.

  “No,” she said.

  “You haven’t heard—”

  “I don’t have to,” she said. “The answer is no.”

  Nathan paused and looked down at his desk. Then he looked back up, and she thought she saw some of his old energy there.

  “It’s important,” he said. “Listen, I don’t want to discuss this anymore long-distance. Monarch and Apex are doing this as a joint operation, with Apex providing the equipment and expertise. Monarch has taken me back on, and, uh—I’m in charge. I’ll be flying out this evening to meet with you. All I ask is that you keep an open mind.”

  “Is that an order?” she said.

  “Look,” he said. “I understand. I’m not here to railroad you. But I do hope to convince you. Kong is your baby, I know that.”

  “That’s right,” she said. “And as long as you keep that in mind…” She pursed her lips on the rest of the sentence, then nodded.

  “I’ll see you when you get here,” she said.

  “It was nice talking to you again, Ilene.”

  “The same, I’m sure, Dr. Lind.”

  * * *

  Ilene had worked with several so-called “language apes” when she had been in graduate school, teaching and learning to communicate with them in sign language. One of them, a chimpanzee named Puck, had been a third-generation signer; another, a young gorilla named Fancy, was learning sign from the ground up.

  As an anthropological linguist, Ilene had found Puck the most interesting. He had le
arned his sign vocabulary and grammar from his mother, who had learned it from her mother, and while humans were involved in the process, Ilene was certain she could see a unique language developing, something with striking differences in grammatical construction and semantics than the original language. The meaning of some words had shifted in three generations; the word order was different from English. In Puck’s pidgin sign language, she thought she might learn something about how humans invented language in the first place.

  Fancy, on the other hand, had mostly been frustrating. With her, language use was still tied mostly to reward, and at times Ilene felt she was merely complicit in teaching an animal to do a fancy parlor trick.

  When trying to teach Kong to sign, she wished that she could even get that far, but in more than a year she had not had the slightest of successes. She had begun the attempt when she noticed the Titan watching her and Jia communicate. He still did that; he seemed to be fascinated by their signing. He seemed less interested when she tried to teach him, but it did not stop her from trying. Intelligence was a messy, awkward thing to measure, but there could be little doubt that Kong was at least as intelligent as a chimpanzee. His brain was gigantic, of course, but to understand its capacity, you also had to factor in the size of his body. Intelligence, generally speaking, had to do with the relative size of brain and body. Chimp brains were not just absolutely smaller than human brains but were smaller in proportion to their body mass as well. Radar and sonar brain scans taken while he was unconscious suggested Kong’s brain was closer in relative size to that of a human than that of a chimp or a gorilla. Yet it wasn’t just about size alone, but about how the different parts of the brain were arranged, and Kong’s brain was … strange.

  Today had not started out more hopeful than any other. But Ilene felt a touch of desperation. Nathan was on the way, and whatever he wanted—whatever Monarch wanted—it probably was not going to be good. Some part of her felt that she needed a breakthrough immediately. She needed to get into that huge head. To be able to talk to him.

  And today, he was following her—she was sure of it. Watching her fingers, listening to her voice, amplified over the loudspeaker.

  You: Kong, she signed. Me: Ilene. She: Jia.

  His eyes shifted with the words.

  Yes, she signed. Good. Can you talk with hands? Say “Kong”?

  That was easy. All he really had to do was point to himself. Bonus if he made the sign Jia had made up for “Kong.”

  At first, he didn’t do anything, so she went back through the whole rigmarole.

  Then to her shock and delight, Kong lifted his hand. His lips parted, not threatening, not showing teeth. A convivial gesture, a greeting even.

  Come on! she thought.

  Kong then scratched his nose, let out an extended, windy yawn, and turned away.

  She closed her eyes and sighed. When she opened them, Jia was there between them.

  Ha, ha, she signed.

  It’s not funny, she said. Jia, this could be important. If we could communicate with him, really talk to him—that could be huge.

  Jia shrugged. He doesn’t talk, she said.

  “Tell me about it.”

  NINE

  Soon after the Earth (yahne) was made, men and grasshoppers came to the surface through a long passageway that led from a large cavern, in the interior of the Earth, to the summit of a high hill, Nané chaha. There, deep down in the Earth, in the great cavern, man and the grasshoppers had been created by Aba, the Great Spirit, having been formed of the yellow clay.

  For a time the men and the grasshoppers continued to reach the surface together, and as they emerged from the long passageway they would scatter in all directions, some going north, others south, east, or west.

  But at last the mother of the grasshoppers who had remained in the cavern was killed by the men and as a consequence there were no more grasshoppers to reach the surface, and ever after those that lived on the Earth were known to the Choctaw as eske ilay, or “mother dead.” However, men continued to reach the surface of the Earth through the long passageway that led to the summit of Nané chaha, and, as they moved about from place to place, they trampled upon many grasshoppers in the high grass, killing many and hurting others.

  The grasshoppers became alarmed as they feared that all would be killed if men became more numerous and continued to come from the cavern in the Earth. They spoke to Aba, who heard them and soon after caused the passageway to be closed and no more men were allowed to reach the surface. But as there were many men remaining in the cavern he changed them to ants and ever since that time the small ants have come forth from holes in the ground.

  The Choctaw of bayou Lacomb, St.

  Tammany parish, Louisiana

  by David I. Bushnell, jr.

  Related by Emma Pisatuntema, 1910

  Skull Island

  The more Ilene thought about Nathan’s visit, the more nervous she felt. Nathan was an old friend, and an interesting guy, but he had his obsessions, coupled with an energy that often led him to go very far out on very thin limbs. That included publishing papers and books peers would consider insane, before he had the proof to back it up, and it sometimes involved doing very dangerous things in order to get that elusive proof. But his brother’s death and the failed attempt to validate his Hollow Earth theory had knocked everything out of him. He had been a husk of his former self, with no motivation to do anything. The dynamo that had once churned inside of him was dead. But in her short phone conversation with him, she had heard it in his voice—the electricity was back on. And while that was good for him, it worried her. Because if he was coming to see her, it almost certainly had to do with Kong. He hadn’t quite said so, but he hadn’t denied it. And that … might not be good, especially given that he had mentioned genetic memory. He wanted Kong to remember something about the Hollow Earth. Kong had never been down there, so it was something he would not consciously know but which might be lodged in the genetic memories he had inherited from his ancestors. What could that be?

  On top of that, she couldn’t find the book she was looking for.

  “Where is it?” she murmured.

  “Dr. Andrews,” the loudspeaker in the hall announced, “you have a visitor waiting at security.”

  She looked over at Jia, who was pulling the book from beneath a pile of stuff on the bed and holding it toward her.

  Thank you, she signed, and sat down next to her so they were eye to eye.

  You’re nervous, Jia signed.

  Everything’s fine, she replied.

  You can’t lie to me, Jia said. I’m not a kid anymore.

  Ilene couldn’t help but smile. Jia was constantly surprising her.

  A few minutes later, she met Nathan at security. He looked better than he had on the video call. He had shaved the beard, for one thing, so the dimple in his chin was visible again. His light hair had been trimmed back, too, and his grey eyes seemed livelier. She tried to hide a grin as he pulled off his rain jacket; underneath he was wearing a brown puffer vest, just as he had when she first met him. She had remarked at the time that she hadn’t seen anyone wearing one of those since the eighties. He had just shrugged and smiled.

  He noticed her expression and glanced down at the vest.

  “It is a new one, at least,” he said.

  “I didn’t know they still made them,” she said.

  He smiled and they exchanged a perfunctory hug. Then he looked questioningly at Jia.

  “This is Jia,” she said, signing along with her spoken words. “Jia, this is Dr. Lind.”

  Kong isn’t sick, Jia signed. Neither am I.

  Ilene smiled. “He’s not that kind of doctor,” she said. “He’s like me. A scientist.”

  “I don’t do house calls,” Nathan said, smiling at the girl.

  Ilene translated. He doesn’t travel around giving people medicine.

  Jia frowned. You won’t hurt Kong, she signed.

  Nathan looked to Ilene, c
onfused.

  “She just said she’s feeling fine,” she replied.

  “Oh,” he replied. “I’m glad.”

  “Can I get you something to drink? Do you want to see your room?”

  “I’ll just get settled in,” he said. He nodded at the doors he had come through from the helipad. “I knew it was bad,” he said. “But this…”

  “And it’s getting worse,” Ilene said. “And it’s our fault, you know.”

  “I think I can help,” he said.

  “Help?” Ilene said. “Help who? Kong? The Iwi? Because Jia is the last of them.”

  “I know you’re skeptical,” he said. “But surely, if it really is getting worse, you must be willing to at least hear an alternative.”

  She sighed. “Tell you what,” she said. “Let me show you where you’ll be staying. Then we’ll go.”

  “Go where?” he asked.

  “To the biodome,” she said. “To see Kong, up close. Get his opinion.”

  While Nathan got settled and changed, she pulled a security clearance for him to visit the enclosure.

  Is he a bad man? Jia asked.

  No, Ilene said. He’s a good man. But sometimes he makes bad mistakes. Like all of us.

  * * *

  “Do you walk through this every day?” Nathan half shouted through the driving wind and rain. As Ilene watched Nathan struggle with the downpour, she realized how much a fact of life it had become for her. Like Kong, it had been a long time since she had seen the real sun.

  “Not always,” she said. “Jia and I have a little prefab in the biodome. Sometimes we stay over. But the room in the Monarch facility has most of our stuff. So, tell me, now that you’re here. You want Kong for something. What?”

  “Godzilla is active again,” Nathan said. “He attacked Pensacola.”

  “I’m aware of that,” she said. “Godzilla doesn’t attack without reason. Maybe you should be looking into that.”

  “Looks like this time, he did,” Nathan said. “If he did it once, he’ll do it again. We have to stop him.”