“Report back what?”
“How well your perfume works,” Satie said. “And you.” He pointed at me. “You have to spray the stuff when I tell you.”
“You can’t do it yourself?” I asked. “It’s just a toggle.”
“You ever fly a helicopter around an aroused and amorous kaiju?”
“I have not,” I admitted.
“Okay, then.” He looked at the two of us. “Either of you been in a helicopter before?”
“I have,” Kahurangi said.
“How did it go?”
“I threw up.”
Satie motioned to the rear of the main cabin. “You sit in the back.”
* * *
“I realize I should have asked this before I got into the helicopter,” I said, over the headset Satie gave me, “but … why are we doing this?”
“You mean why are we traveling a hundred klicks to spray a monster with horny juice?” he said.
“Yes, that.”
“Well, you know how back in the other place, we have pandas?”
“I’ve heard of them, yes,” I said, and reflected on how quickly the place I had lived all of my life up to three days ago was now “the other place.”
“Pandas are cute, but they’re not what you would call rocket scientists, and sometimes they forget how to breed, you know? So humans have to help them make a love connection. Well, kaiju are the biggest, stupidest pandas you will ever meet.”
“Kaiju forget how to have sex?” Kahurangi said.
“They forget a lot of things, I’m gonna tell you,” Satie said. “They’re the top of the evolutionary ladder here, but evolution definitely didn’t select for brains on this planet. Everything here is dim as a rock. The gentleman we’re calling on today is even less smart than your average kaiju. There’s a lady of his species one valley over from him, has been trying to make his acquaintance for the last year. Every time she comes over, he tries to fight her. So, we’re here to change his mind.”
“Okay, but why do we care?” I asked.
“Why do we care about pandas?”
“Because they’re cute,” Kahurangi said. “Literally that’s why.”
“You’re not wrong, but the answer I was thinking about is that they’re endangered. Well, so are Edward and Bella.”
“Edward and Bella?” I said. “You named these kaiju after friggin’ Twilight?”
“I didn’t,” Satie said. “If it were up to me, I would have named them Sid and Nancy. Fits their personalities better. But no one asked me. One of you millennials did it.”
“Millennials ruining kaiju naming,” I said to Kahurangi.
“We’re just the worst,” he confirmed.
“Ed and Bel are the only two of their species on this part of the continent. We don’t usually see them north of forty degrees latitude, and we don’t see too many of them below that as it is. So we want to see if we can get them to make more of each other. We’re the Kaiju Preservation Society. We’re gonna try to preserve some kaiju.”
“And how is that going so far?” Kahurangi asked.
“Not great! This is try number five.” Satie jerked his head back toward the canisters. “Dr. Pham’s been tweaking the formula as we’ve gone along. That’s why you’re here, Dr. Lautagata. You get to tell her how Ed reacts to this version.”
“How did he react the first four times?”
“Various sorts of pissed off, mostly.”
“That’s not good.”
“It’s not, but I’m a good pilot. The helicopter usually doesn’t take any damage.”
“Usually,” Kahurangi said, looking at me deadpan as he did so.
“The last version was almost there. Doc said she definitely saw evidence of a tumescent cloaca.”
I laughed.
“What’s got you chuckling?” Satie said.
“I was just thinking that Edward’s Tumescent Cloaca would have been an excellent band name.”
“Emo, obviously,” Kahurangi said.
“Their first album glistened with promise, but their follow-up was a little flaccid.”
“Their third album was really shitty.”
“To be fair, the competition was stiff that year.”
“I just thought that they should have showed more spunk.”
I was going to add more to this terrible, disgraceful conversation, but then we crested a hill and I got my first look at Edward.