“You named the kaiju Betsy?” I asked.
“I didn’t, someone else did. You have a problem with Betsy?”
“I don’t know, I was expecting something Japanese, or a name like ‘Hammer Fist’ or something.”
“Formally, the adult ones have numbers. But the ones that live near bases get informal names. And they get named something easy to remember. Like Betsy.”
“‘Hammer Fist’ is easy to remember,” Niamh said.
“When it’s your turn to name a local kaiju, you can name it that if you like.”
“What if someone goes by that name?” Kahurangi asked.
“Hammer Fist?”
“Sure, but I meant Betsy in this case.”
“It’s the twenty-first century; no one goes by Betsy anymore,” Tom said. “But even if they did, there’s usually context. If you’re saying, ‘Betsy has the results from the lab,’ it’s probably the human. If it’s ‘Betsy just got pissed off and burned down twenty thousand acres of jungle,’ it’s probably the kaiju.”
“I thought we weren’t using imperial measures anymore,” Niamh said.
“I don’t know what twenty thousand acres is in metric.”
“About eight thousand hectares,” Aparna said.
Tom stared at her. “Really, that fast?”
Aparna shrugged. “It’s just math.”
Tom turned to me. “Did you know that?”
“I did not,” I assured him.
“Thank you.”
“I lift things.”
“Hey, where does that road go?” Niamh, who had a seat close to a window, pointed to a wide and meandering path that became visible as we gently and quietly took to the air.
“It’s not a road,” Tom said. “It’s a kaiju trail. They make them when they walk.”
We all craned to look.
“Jesus, that’s wide,” Kahurangi said.
“Do they keep to their trails?” Aparna asked.
“Mostly,” Tom said. “For the same reason we walk on sidewalks and not in the bushes. And here’s something interesting. In places here that correspond to where humans live back home, the kaiju paths often mirror the paths of our major roads.”
“They’re following the topographic path of least resistance,” Kahurangi said.
“Bingo.”
“So where do they go?” I asked. “The paths?”
“The adult kaiju have their own home territories. They clear out space in places that they like.”
“And do those correspond to our cities?”
Tom smiled. “They do, sometimes.” He pointed to the path. “In Betsy’s case, though, this path more or less makes a loop around Honda Base. She seems curious about what we do here. That or she’s trying to find the nuclear reactor. She mostly doesn’t bother us, though.”
“Mostly?” Niamh said.
“She’s been known to chase the airships.”
“What.”
“Relax, she hasn’t caught one yet.” Tom reconsidered. “Well, not one with people on it. She’s gotten a couple of drones.”
Niamh stared at Tom, and then buckled up in their seat, emphatically.
* * *
We had crossed onto the Labrador Peninsula, and were not too far off from Tanaka Base, when a noise reverberated in the Shobijin cabin. Everyone fell silent.
The noise came again, much closer.
“Tell me that’s not what I think it is,” Niamh said.
Roderigo Perez-Schmidt came on the speakers.
“Attention, Gold Team. We have a kaiju out of place. Kaiju out of place. Stand by.”
Everyone continued their silence. Then Perez-Schmidt came back on the speakers.
“Attention, Gold Team. Correction, two kaiju out of place. Preparing to climb.”
The cabin erupted with noise, and everyone rushed the windows.
“What does that mean?” I asked Tom, and then noticed him looking out the window with a not-at-all-reassuring expression on his face. I turned to look out the window.
There was a very large creature staring up into the airship. It was too close, and our path was bringing us closer.
“Oh, shit,” I said. I actually backed out of my chair.
“There’s another one,” Kahurangi called out, from a window on the other side of the cabin. I went over to him and looked where he was looking.
This other kaiju was just as brain-defyingly large. It looked at us briefly, then turned its attention back to the first kaiju. It was also too close, and we were also getting closer.