Godzilla vs. Kong by Greg Keyes (e books free to read TXT) 📗

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