Godzilla vs. Kong Read online

  The man didn’t answer.

  Simmons reached for the photograph and turned it over. He picked it up and held it closer.

  “Is this really what I think it is?” he said.

  “Yes,” the man said. “It is.”

  Simmons sat down, still staring at the image, and he knew. He could see the circuits in his head, already, or some of them, anyway. It was the missing piece. Or a missing piece.

  “Astonishing,” he said. “And yet, what would I do with such a thing?”

  “Don’t play games.” The man spoke quietly, without apparent emotion. The hiss of a viper.

  “Well,” Simmons said. “It would be better—”

  “—if I had two?” the man said.

  “Now that you mention it.”

  “I have two.”

  “What?” Simmons said. “Not all three?”

  “Just the two,” the man said.

  “And for this you want…?”

  “Money. A lot of money.”

  “Really? I should think a man like you—”

  “You don’t know what a man like me is,” the man said. “You will never know.” He pulled a bit of paper from his shirt pocket.

  “The money goes to these three accounts,” he said.

  “I have to hear your price first,” Simmons told him.

  “You don’t, actually,” the man said. “Send the money. If it is enough, I will deliver. If not, I have other options.”

  “No, hang on,” Simmons began, but the man stood up, took the photograph, and left the office. Simmons watched him go, following his progress out on the security cameras. Then he took out his phone and tapped a number.

  “Yes,” he said, when he got an answer. “I need you to see how much money we can come up with. Completely off the books, you understand?” He stood and went to the window as he listened to the reply. He looked out at the ship and the protesters.

  “No,” he said. “That’s not enough. Yes, I understand you may have to liquidate some offshore accounts. That’s fine. What do I pay you for? That’s right. Just do it.” He paused. “And another thing. I’m going to set up a press conference downstairs in about half an hour. I’ll be cutting a handsome donation to whatever organization is out there protesting. It might not shut them up, but it will make them look bad. Yes, of course we’re reporting that one. Don’t get these two things confused. Right.”

  He touched the phone off and looked back out the window.

  “Environmentalists,” he muttered under his breath.

  TWO

  It may be replied, that the idea of a world within a world, is absurd. But, who can assert with confidence, that this idea is, in reality, nothing more than the imagination of a feverish brain? How is it shown that such a form does not exist? Are there not as strong reasons for believing that the earth is constituted of concentric spheres, as the court of Spain, or any man in Europe, had to believe that there was an undiscovered continent? Has not Captain Symmes theoretically proven his assertions of concentric spheres and open poles, and embodied a catalogue of facts, numerous and plausible, in support of his opinions? And who has confuted his assertions? I dare to say, that none can be found, who can fully disprove them, and account for the facts which he adduces as the proofs of his theory. Is there not the same reason to believe, that the earth is hollow, as there is to place implicit confidence in the opinion, that the planets are inhabited? And yet the one has been ridiculed as the wild speculations of a madman, while the other receives credit among the most enlightened.

  If it can be shown that Symmes’s Theory is probable, or has the least plausibility attached to it—nay, that it is even possible—why not afford him the means of testing its correctness? The bare possibility of such a discovery, ought to be a sufficient stimulus to call forth the patronage of any government. And should the theory prove correct, and the adventure succeed, would it not immortalize our nation?

  From Symmes’s Theory of Concentric Spheres,

  James McBride, 1826

  A Carrier in the Pacific, One Year Ago

  “Mercury,” Nathan Lind told his older brother Dave. “Not Apollo.”

  Dave settled his paper cup of single malt Scotch on the metal counter.

  “Why not Zeus?” he said. “I mean, if we’re talking Greek gods, why not go for it?”

  “I’m not talking about Greek gods, dimwit,” Nathan said. “The space program. Mercury. Gemini. Apollo.”

  “Oh,” Dave said. “That makes more sense, I guess.”

  “It’s an apt comparison,” Nathan replied. “In 1961 the unknown frontier was space; no human being had ever been there. We had a lot of science, but we didn’t know for sure what to expect. So we took it slow.”

  “Right,” Dave agreed. “So slow the Soviets beat us to the punch.”

  “This isn’t a race,” Nathan said. “We’re not in competition. We practically had to beg the press to show up. We don’t have anything to prove.”

  “Well, that’s not true,” Dave said, wagging his finger at Nathan. “We’ve spent years wrangling funding for this expedition. If we don’t have anything to show for it, we won’t get any more. Half of the scientists at Monarch think it’s bullshit, and almost half of those that do think it’s real believe we ought to leave well enough alone, especially after that … bat thing—”

  “Camazotz,” Nathan said. “Yeah. He kind of put a damper on things.”

  “Right. Since that mess, they want to shut us down. Fortunately, I still have enough pull to make it happen. As long as it happens soon. If we put on a good show, bring back some goodies, we’ll have plenty of people writing us checks. If not, we’re done. Years of working and planning, down the drain.”

  “Monarch was practically founded on the notion of the Hollow Earth,” Nathan said. “Bill Randa, Houston Brooks—”

  “Randa was crushed by a Skullcrawler some fifty-odd years ago,” Dave said. “And Brooks, well, everyone likes him, but he isn’t taken all that seriously by most people. Not anymore.”

  “I take him seriously,” Nathan said.

  “Most sane people,” Dave said.

  “Hey, who volunteered to pilot this thing?” Nathan said.

  “I never said I was sane,” Dave replied. “We have the same genes, you know.”

  “Hah,” Nathan said. “You’d never know it to look at us.”

  “Yeah. That’s why we’ve been explaining that we aren’t twins since you were eight and I was ten. Remember that time in Sao Paulo, in that bar?”

  That was true, although in the details he knew Dave was better-looking; his eyes deep blue instead of gray, his jaw a little more manly, his locks a shade closer to true blond than Nathan’s sandy hair.

  “That’s not what I meant,” Nathan said. “What I meant is, you’re the guy who broke Mach 10 in an experimental Monarch aircraft, while I was looking at grains of basalt under a microscope. You summited Everest while I was tracing shifts in paleomagnetism and writing articles in obscure journals about bioelectrical sensory organs in trilobites.”

  Dave put his hand on Nathan’s shoulder. “Nathan,” he said. “Shut up. I might have flown a fast plane, but I didn’t develop it. And at this point climbing Everest is, at best, tourism. What you’ve figured out—what you’ve proven—I never could have.”

  “There are people who still think I haven’t proven anything,” Nathan said. “They think I’m as nuts as Darling back in 1926, when his expedition started out to find Hollow Earth—and never returned.”

  “Sure,” Dave said. “And together, we’re going to show them they’re wrong. In about, what? Eight hours. So let’s have our one shot of decent whisky, get some rest, and change the world. Together.”

  Nathan nodded, and reached for his drink. But he frowned.

  “Okay,” Dave said. “What is it?”

  “We can always delay this,” Nathan said. “Get a little more data. Let me crunch the numbers again.”

  Dave sighed. “Like I s
aid, if we wait too long—poof. The funding goes away. We’ve already lost pilots and aircraft, and we haven’t even tried to get in yet. Important people are trying to pull the plug. Like your friend Andrews.”

  “I understand that,” Nathan said. “But … maybe not there. Maybe not Skull Island. There are too many complicating factors now. The storm. And the entrance, it’s too unstable. I don’t trust it. There’s always Antarctica—”

  “Which you said we couldn’t enter. Not with the vehicles we have. Right?”

  Nathan nodded. “Yes. But we can improve the planes. I have some ideas.”

  “That’s more time and more money,” Dave said. “A lot more money. I’m just doing the math here, brother. It’s now or never.” He put his arm around Nathan’s shoulder. “I believe in you, little brother,” he said. “You’ve got this. Anyway, Mercury, not Apollo, right?”

  “You understand what I meant by that?” Nathan asked.

  “Yeah,” Dave said. “The first Mercury mission just dipped our toes in space. We didn’t try to go all the way to the Moon. Or even orbit the Earth. Just up and down.”

  “So tomorrow…?”

  “Wet toes,” Dave said. “No Moon landing. I’ll see what I see, we’ll get better readings, I’ll come back. And next time—we’ll go together. All the way. Now.” He lifted his cup. “Unto the breach,” he said.

  Nathan raised his own whisky. “Unto the breach,” he said. “And Sláinte mhath.”

  “Fancy,” Dave said. “Where did you learn that?”

  “A phrasebook,” Nathan said. “I did a book signing in Glasgow—”

  “Just drink,” Dave said.

  “Fine.” He drank, then made a face as the stuff went down. “Oh, God,” Nathan said. “What the hell is that?”

  “The smokiness? The peat?”

  “If by that, you mean acid and dirt,” Nathan said. “Wow. That was awful.”

  “Maybe an acquired taste,” Dave said. “I guess you didn’t have any Islay whisky in Glasgow.”

  “No,” he admitted. “A beer now and then is more my speed.”

  Dave nodded and knocked his knuckles on the table. “What are we going to find down there, Nathan? In Hollow Earth.”

  “You’ve read the briefing. And my book, I assume.”

  “Yes, well, I’ve also been busy training,” Dave said. “The briefing is boiler-plate nothingspeak, and I haven’t had a chance to read your book. So what do you, the expert, think we’re going to find down there?”

  Nathan swallowed again, trying to get the taste of the whisky out of his throat.

  “Another world,” he said.

  “Godzilla?”

  Nathan cocked his head. “Brooks thinks so. He believes the Titans originated from there. And since Godzilla has vanished from sight, maybe that’s where he’s hiding out.”

  “And you?”

  He knew Dave was probably just trying to mollify him. But it was hard not to get going anyway, especially after spending weeks on a tour where hardly anyone was listening.

  “Do you know how many times life on Earth nearly became extinct?” Nathan asked.

  “Well, there were the dinosaurs, I guess—”

  “Many, many times,” Nathan said. “The end of the Permian was a big one. Ninety percent of everything died. But even earlier—there was a period when the entire planet froze over. We call it Snowball Earth, because that’s what it would have looked like from space. Not a regular ice age, mind you, when you still have liquid surface water in the oceans. I mean totally frozen over. And there were other times, right after we think life formed, that the Earth was pounded with asteroids, covered with volcanic lakes. An inferno. And yet, life kept coming back. Every time. After every massive die-off, something poked its head up and started to evolve, diversify, build an ecosystem.”

  He paused, let it sink in a moment.

  “You think life hid out down there,” Dave said. “In Hollow Earth. And when the worst of it was over, it just came back out of hiding. But how? Without sunlight—”

  “The first life on Earth probably didn’t depend on the sun at all,” Nathan said. “Photosynthetic organisms like cyanobacteria and algae were latecomers to the party. In fact they caused an extinction of their own because of all the oxygen they produced, which was pure poison to the world’s earliest life. Even now, there are plenty of organisms that need neither sunlight nor oxygen. What life does need is some sort of energy source; there are living things that subsist on the heat and chemicals in deep-sea volcanic vents, where no sunlight can penetrate. And I think there is plenty of energy in Hollow Earth. More than we can dream of, maybe. It’s just the form of it that I’m not certain of. But if there is energy, life will find a way to use it, unlock its potential.”

  He leaned forward, feeling the whisky in his veins.

  “I don’t think life began up here at all,” he confided. “I think it may have originated down there. Made its way up here through volcanic vents and so forth. And yes, when times got tough up here, maybe surface life migrated back down there. Cross-pollination. An exchange that’s been happening for billions of years.” He looked seriously at his brother. “And maybe one of those exchanges included some of our own ancestors. Australopithecines, or Homo habilis, but more likely some form of hominin that we’ve never found fossils of—because they’re down there. Do you know how many human cultures, scattered all over the globe, have legends that their ancestors emerged from the ground? I think when we get down there, we won’t just find the origin of the Titans, but possibly of ourselves.”

  “Wow,” Dave said.

  “I know, right,” Nathan replied.

  “I mean, wow, what a lightweight,” Dave said. “One shot and you’re drunk off your ass.”

  Nathan smiled. “Yeah. I’m rambling. Who knows what we’ll find down there? That’s what this is all about, right?”

  “Absolutely, brother,” Dave said. “Which reminds me.”

  He pulled something out of his pocket and held it in his palm.

  Nathan stared at it incredulously. “My spaceman,” he said. “How—”

  “My spaceman,” Dave replied. “We made a bet, remember?”

  “You cheated,” Nathan said. “You still have that?”

  “Sure,” Dave said. “I took it to college with me. To remember my little brother and his crazy ideas. It’s been my good luck charm. But now I want you to have it back.”

  “But—why?”

  “I don’t need it anymore,” Dave said. “I’ve got you now.”

  “I can’t—”

  “Sure you can,” Dave said. “You were right. I did cheat. It belongs to you.”

  “Dave, I don’t know what to say.”

  “Say goodnight,” his brother replied. “I’d better get my beauty sleep. I want to be sharp when I get behind the stick.”

  “Right,” Nathan said, taking the little plastic doll and looking at it. Remembering. “See you in the morning.”

  * * *

  The next morning, Nathan watched nervously as Dave and his team went through their checklists and their craft were fueled on the deck of the carrier.

  The press corps arrived, and it was showtime.

  There were more of them than he had imagined, which he supposed was good news.

  Once he thought they were ready, he cleared his throat.

  He waved at the three aircraft.

  “Good morning,” he said. “The, uh, expedition consists, as you can see, of three state-of-the-art Monarch hover jets. They have been modified, reduced from two-seater to single-seater craft to accommodate a variety of scientific instruments. I know they aren’t all that impressive in terms of size, but they are exceptionally maneuverable, capable of supersonic flight, and equipped with the specialized communications equipment they will need for their descent into the Hollow Earth.”

  “Dr. Lind,” one of the reporters interrupted. “You speak of the Hollow Earth as if you have evidence for its existence. Bu
t surely you know the vast majority of Earth scientists consider your theory as ridiculous as that of a flat Earth.”

  “Yes,” Nathan said. “I am aware of that. But I can assure you, we would not have mounted this expedition unless we were quite sure there was a place for these aircraft to explore. I am aware that my claims are unorthodox, but I think that in a very short time you all will see them borne out. This is what science does; it tests predictions.”

  “You’re saying there is a hole big enough to fly aircraft through that goes through the crust of the planet,” another reporter said. “How can such a passage resist the intense pressure, the temperatures that most surely melt stone?”

  “Both of those objections are based upon false assumptions,” Nathan said. “The data I have collected, and my calculations based on them, demonstrate there is a sort of membrane, an electrostatic-gravitational anomaly that separates the Hollow Earth from the upper parts of the planet. The mathematics predict a sort of acceleration vortex. It will be something like slipping into a jetstream and will carry our explorers very far down in a very short time. When they come out the other end of it, they should be at their destination. Their instruments might get wonky during that time, but communication ought to resume when they reach the other side. Just to be sure, they will release a series of relay devices as they descend.”

  “And supposing all of this is true,” another reporter asked. “And there is some vast system of caverns down there. Some have rumored that Godzilla and the other Titans may have their origins down there. What will your team do if they encounter … monsters?”

  “Then we come back,” Dave said, from right next to him. Nathan jumped a little. He hadn’t seen his brother walk up.

  Dave gestured at their exploration craft.

  “We couldn’t make room in these beauties for weapons. Even if we had, we know they wouldn’t be too useful if we run into Titans. So we stay alert, we fly true, we come home. And hopefully, we’ll have some fantastic images for you.”

  “So where is this happening?” a reporter asked. “Are they going to dive down into the ocean?”