“This is not working,” I said to the plant. The plant, while sympathetic, I’m sure, said nothing.
The door to my room opened, and Niamh appeared in it. “Hey.”
“It’s called knocking,” I said.
“I know what it’s called, I just didn’t do it.”
“I could have been sleeping.”
“No one’s sleeping tonight.”
“Or rubbing one out.”
“Definitely no one’s doing that tonight.”
“You have a point.”
“We need you in the living room.”
“What’s up?”
“We need your help on something.”
“What is it?”
“If you get out of bed and come to the living room, you’ll find out, won’t you?” Niamh disappeared from the doorframe but left the door open, so the light from the living room was still flooding in. After one more minute of lying there just to show Niamh they were not the boss of me, I got up and went into the living room, which my cottage-mates had strewn with documents and laptops.
“Let me guess, you need me to pick up after you,” I said.
“Well, you do lift things,” Kahurangi said. “But that’s not it.”
“We need your advice,” Aparna said.
“Not so much advice as we need you to listen to us and tell us we’re not completely off our crackers,” Niamh added.
“All right,” I said, and sat at our table. “What is it?”
Aparna sat as well. “Bella has to get back over to this side of the fence. Somehow. Tonight, if possible.”
“Why?”
“Because if we don’t, I think she’s going to explode.”
“You mean, explode like an atomic bomb.”
“Yes.”
“In Canada.”
“Yes.”
“There are … challenges to getting her back over here,” I said, after a moment.
“No shit,” Niamh said, sitting down as well. “But we might have something. Sort of.”
I held up a hand. “Hold that for just a second,” I said to Niamh. I brought my attention back to Aparna. “Explain the whole ‘Bella’s going to explode’ thing to me, please. I thought she was fine.”
“She was fine,” Aparna stressed. “Over here. But she’s not over here. She’s over there. And over there, on our Earth, things are very different, environmentally. The atmosphere is not as thick or as oxygen rich. And it’s much, much colder. It’s late October in Labrador. It’s literally freezing there.”
“And that affects the kaiju.”
Kahurangi cocked his head. “It does. But it affects the parasites more.”
“It’s already killing them.” Aparna grabbed her laptop and opened up a file to show it to me, as if I were going to read the whole thing. “Specifically, the parasites that act as her cooling and airflow system. These parasites are common across a bunch of kaiju species, so we know a lot about them. What we know about them is that they’re hugely susceptible to cold. When the temperature drops below ten degrees Celsius, they start dying off.”
I looked at Aparna blankly.
“That’s like fifty degrees Fahrenheit,” she said, barely repressing her exasperation.
“Got it,” I said.
“It’s not just the temperatures,” Kahurangi said. “A kaiju and all of the parasites are used to a thicker atmosphere and more oxygen. Going to our Earth for them is the equivalent of us going up to six thousand meters and then trying to run a marathon.”
“So lack of oxygen is killing them, too.”
“Not killing them directly but it makes them do their thing much less efficiently,” Niamh said. “And that affects the kaiju. Affects Bella.”
“Bella is a flying species of kaiju,” Aparna said. “Flying kaiju have especially complex airflow systems. They’re part of how they fly. And those airflow systems are intimately connected to cooling their internal reactors. Impair and kill off the parasites that control the airflow systems—”
“Bella goes boom,” I finished.
Aparna nodded. “Right.”
“Tonight.”
“Within the next day for sure.”
“And we know this how?”
“This is where I come in,” Niamh said. “Although you helped.”
“I did?” I said, surprised.
“Only a little, don’t get a big head about it.”