Kingdom of Monsters by John Schneider (microsoft ebook reader .TXT) 📗

Now she smiled a bit.  “Don't get me wrong, I was hacking into top-secret files since I was a kid.  My father didn't seem to mind about that.  I knew perfectly well who killed Kennedy by the time I was eight, but there was never anyone around to care.”

Rosa perked and started to ask, but Shanna was already past it.

“Area 51 got their best stuff from us,” Shanna said.  “There was never a Bigfoot, or a Loch Ness Monster.  And yes, the alien autopsy was a fake.

“But,” she said, “Monster Island was real.  It was my home.”

Chapter 19

Kate's first reaction to the cryptologically mythological Professor Nolan Hinkle was dismay and shock.

She wasn't sure what she had expected.  Kate had known he was an old man, but as Shanna bent to his side, the impression was of an RN assisting a resident of a nursing home.

Perhaps even a dementia patient.

Nolan Hinkle regarded Kate and her entourage with clear confusion – which was perhaps understandable, given Cameron's camera, and Maverick with his rifle slung over one burly shoulder – but there was blinking hesitance in his old eyes, and when he spoke, his voice was willowy and frail.

“Shanna?  We have guests?”

Kate glanced sideways at Betty, who nodded back with a frown.

“Professor Hinkle?” Kate said, stepping forward.  “My name is Kate Rhodes.  I'm an investigative documentary filmmaker.  I received footage via an e-mail in your name.  Footage of this island.”

But even as she said it, Kate was beginning to doubt it.

“Daddy,” Shanna said, “did you contact this woman?  Or make any outside contact at all?”

Hinkle shook his head, wide-eyed and bewildered.  “I can't imagine,” he said.

“We got here somehow,” Kate said.  “I didn't peg the latitude/longitude on a dartboard.”

She reached in her bag.

“Here,” she said, producing the thumb-drive.  “I can show you the message.”

Shanna popped the device into the nearest PC, bringing up the video – the images of the canyon they'd just driven past, and all the beasts in the valley.

She shook her head.  “I don't understand.”

“That's the main valley,” Hinkle said, suddenly alert.  There was an abrupt change in his posture, and he seemed to snap to attention.  “We have three, where natural faults have split the island cap.”  He leaned forward, tapping on the screen, indicating the surrounding foliage.  “It was actually quite difficult to duplicate a prehistoric ecosystem on such a small island.”

The willowy tones were replaced by a professorial lecturer.  Kate was reminded of her own grandfather, in the late-stages of senility, long past the point where he remembered who she was, but he had been an electrical-engineer for forty years, and could switch-on and discuss that stuff for hours, never once screwing up the math, right up to his final days.

“We are talking, after all,” Hinkle continued, “not just about animals from different climates, but entirely different eras.  In a fraction of their natural space.”

Kate nodded to Cameron, who brought his camera to his shoulder.

“Hold on,” Shanna said.  “You shouldn't be filming.”

“We're already here,” Kate said.  “They’re going to arrest us anyway.  And we're way past the point of I-could-tell-you-but-then-I'd-have-to-kill-you, right?”

Kate had meant the remark to be flippant, but Cameron glanced at her over his camera, a touch disquieted.  Even Maverick frowned.

Betty, who hadn't even been told, displayed no external reaction beyond rapid blinking.

Oh well, Kate thought.  No point dwelling on it now.

“Excuse me, Professor,” Kate asked, simply moving forward as if the entire exchange was a scheduled interview, “you say this island is small.  Why create such large animals?  Every creature I've seen is the largest example of its type.”

“Well, young lady,” Hinkle said, responding automatically to the student's question, “size is very much a focal point.  One of our first practical applications was the accelerated growth of crops and livestock.”

Hinkle's grin turned briefly nostalgic.

“Do you know one of my original sponsors as a young man was Greenpeace?  They wanted their condors back.”  Hinkle chuckled with the memory.  “That was before the government stepped in.”

Shanna put her hand to her head with a groan.  “Daddy...”

But Hinkle was lecturing now.

“You will note,” he said, indicating the screen, “the animals are not exclusively dinosaurs.  We have representation of every single branch of animals that ever produced giants.  Fish, mosasaurs, lizards, snakes, crocodiles.”  Hinkle pointed to several gigantic beasts that resembled rhinoceros with necks like giraffes.  “We also have several large mammals.”

“What about that big gorilla?”  Maverick asked, raising his hand like a kid in a classroom.

“Congo.”  Hinkle nodded.  “Yes, that was the next stage.  Gigantism not simply reproduced in an existing, albeit extinct, species, but applied to an extant animal, from a line where gigantism never evolved.”

Maverick nodded slowly, like that same kid who didn't quite understand the answer.

“Growth can be generated by many factors,” Hinkle explained, “both in an individual and a species.  The question is what activates it, and can macro-evolutionary catalysts be applied to the micro-scale of a single organism?”

Now Kate was nodding along with Maverick.  Recognizing the blank looks on his students, Hinkle grinned.

“Would you like to see?” he asked.

“Daddy,” Shanna said, “you're going to get us arrested.”

Hinkle pish-poshed.  “Nonsense.  Shanna, we're being rude.  We have guests.”

Again, the here-and-now focus seemed to shift in the old man's eyes.

Shanna glanced at Kate.  “Daddy, do you understand?  These people are not supposed to be here.”

Hinkle paused, turning to his daughter, holding up a corrective finger.

“Neither are we,” he said.  “Yet, here we all are.”

Shanna frowned, starting to reply, but she was interrupted by a loud beeping, like a timed alarm.

“You need to set out the morning feed,” Hinkle said.  “You've got your chores.”

Shanna sighed, throwing her hands up.

“I'll be right outside,” she said, eyeing Kate meaningfully.  “Everything's automated.  I shouldn't be long.”'

With a last, reluctant look at the rest of them, Shanna turned to leave, tapping the sliding glass shut behind her.  The motion-sensing cameras followed her movements and her image remained on the security screens, blinking to a new view as she walked past each building.

Hinkle sat down