“Kevin,” I said.
“That’s the one,” Kahurangi agreed. He didn’t smile when he said it. For the first time, the commonplace names of the kaiju just weren’t that funny.
“So you think she flew the coop and her tracker fell off,” Satie said to Kahurangi.
“I don’t know, but it seems possible.” He nodded to Aparna. “She said we have a tracking blind spot right now. If it fell off there, that would explain a lot.”
MacDonald looked at Satie. “How long until we can bring another aerostat into the area?”
“We can assign the one immediately southwest at any time,” he said. As head of Tanaka Base’s aviators and aircraft, he was also responsible for the aerostats under the base’s control. “But they move slowly. It will take most of a day for the nearest one to move.”
“We need answers faster than that.”
“I can’t make them go faster than they go,” Satie said. “But in the meantime, if you like, we can assign the Shobijin to act as a temporary aerostat. It’s not doing anything else at the moment. Put aerostat guts in it and float it there until we can move a real one into place.”
MacDonald looked at Danso, who nodded. “Let’s do that, then,” she said.
Aparna raised her hand. “There’s another issue.”
“What’s that, Dr. Chowdhury?”
“It’s possible Bella is either hiding in our blind spot, or maybe her tracker fell off in it,” Aparna acknowledged, “but that doesn’t answer the question of where her eggs went. They’re gone. All of them.”
“Other creatures ate them after she left,” Danso suggested.
“I’m sure they would,” Aparna said. “But not that fast.” She turned to me. “You said that you saw no eggs, no natal jelly at all.”
“No,” I confirmed. Satie also nodded. “We were up pretty high, so maybe we didn’t see everything. But where we knew Bella had been, there’s nothing. No Bella. No eggs.”
“Bella wouldn’t have left her eggs except in case of an emergency or imminent threat,” Aparna said to MacDonald and Danso. “We know that’s basic roosting behavior for her species. But if she did move out of her roosting posture, she wouldn’t—and she couldn’t—take the eggs with her.” She pointed at the screen. “Bella is missing, and that’s strange. But her eggs are completely gone, and that’s impossible.”
Danso looked over to Niamh. “Unless,” she prompted.
“Unless Bella went through the dimensional barrier,” Niamh said, finishing Danso’s thought.
“Is that possible?”
“It shouldn’t be,” Niamh said, slowly. “Her nesting behavior kept the dimensional barrier thin, but not thin enough to get her over. And her physical state hasn’t changed since she started brooding. No data we have indicates any change at all. And even if there had been a change”—Niamh pointed at Aparna—“she’s right, the eggs would still be there. The eggs wouldn’t have gone with her.”
“Why not?” Kahurangi asked.
“Because they don’t have little nuclear reactors of their own yet, basically,” Niamh said.
“But Bella’s parasites would have gone with her,” MacDonald said. “And they don’t have biological nuclear reactors.”
“If they were physically on her at the time, sure,” Niamh said. “They’re literally along for the ride. But the eggs Bella laid aren’t attached to her anymore. They wouldn’t have gone with her to the other side any more than they would have gone with her if she flew away on this side.”
“So the question is not ‘Where is Bella?’ but ‘Where are her eggs?’” MacDonald said.
“That’s right.”
“So, where are her eggs?”
“I have no idea,” Niamh said, then paused to reconsider. “No, that’s not true. I have an idea, but it’s not one I like.”
“Tell us.”
“You’re not going to like it either.”
“What is it?”
“Bella and her eggs did go through the dimensional barrier.”
“You just said she couldn’t get through,” Danso said.
“She can’t,” Niamh confirmed. “And her eggs definitely can’t. Not on their own, anyway.”
“Spit it out, Dr. Healy,” MacDonald said.