by Greg Keyes
* * *
Nathan glanced at the diagram, showing the tunnel cutting through the Earth’s mantle into the hollow core.
“You’re sure he’ll survive this?” Simmons asked. He looked back over his shoulder to the back seat where Maia was strapped in.
“You mean the monkey?” he said. “The one you wanted to dump?”
“Hey, if we need him, we need him,” she said. “Is he going to make it to the bottom in one piece?”
“Oh,” Nathan assured her, “he’ll be fine. It’s us I’d worry about. We’re about to be launched a thousand miles in two seconds.”
He cracked an antacid tablet from its packet and plunked it into his water bottle. “Until gravity inverts itself and spits us into free fall.” He tipped the water bottle so she could see the pill fizzing and bubbling like crazy. “It’ll be the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen.” He handed Simmons the paper bag tucked in front of his seat.
“Here,” he said. “For the vomit.”
“What?” she said.
Ahead, Nathan saw Kong lose control as a steel beam snapped under the force of his swing. He landed on his backside on the bottom of the tunnel and began to flail about, slipping on his butt as if going down the largest waterslide on the planet. As the slide became a cliff, the Titan managed to turn over and claw at the cliff to no avail—there was absolutely nothing to afford purchase for something of his mass.
As they, too tipped over the edge, Nathan saw Kong below, limbs outstretched, in free fall. Below him the pulsing, swirling energy membrane they called the Vile Vortex spanned the entirety of the rift. This was where things were going to get fun.
Kong hit the membrane; it seemed to stretch with his weight and then close behind him as he vanished.
And here we go, Nathan thought.
The membrane appeared to elongate as they hit it, to cling to them, like they were trying to punch through a sheet of rubber. Time slowed, somehow, even as they went faster and faster and acceleration pressed them back into their seats. The world went very strange. Color saturated everything; bizarre cavescapes that lived for an instant and then vanished into memory came and went at incredible speed. The HEAV shook, then shuddered and yawed, rattling as if it was on the verge of simply coming apart around them, and he felt like his ribs were trying to flatten against the back of his seat.
They could sell tickets, he remembered Dave saying. He was having trouble breathing.
It’s coming it’s coming it’s coming…
The moment. That last moment. Dave’s final instant of life. Maybe his as well.
It came, as they were thrown out with brutal force and incredible speed into … another world.
Below them, above them—for the moment up and down had no meaning. It was the world Nathan knew, turned inside out.
There was no sky; or rather, there was, but it was sandwiched between two different downs. “Below” them, from the direction they had come, he could see vast forests, mountains, rivers, stretching out in every direction. But ahead of them, through a veil of clouds, was another landscape, equally beautiful and rugged, with tree-covered mountains hanging like stalagmites. And those clouds between them centered on a storm, incandescing with interior lightning, illuminating the whole weird scene almost like daylight.
Which way was actually up? His inner ear was terribly confused. Behind him he heard Simmons making use of the bag he had given her.
At least he hoped she was.
The HEAV lurched toward the cloud. Kong had come out behind them, due to his greater inertia, but now he flew past them for the same reason. But the Titan suddenly came to a stop, reversed direction, and came hurtling back toward the HEAVs. At the same time, all sorts of noises started up in the cabin, some from alarms, some from the pilot.
Engine failure. It was all pretty surreal, because all he could think was, this was how it had ended for Dave, this is how it ended for him. So much for Apex and their miracle craft.
Simmons screamed, and Nathan saw Kong hurtling past, missing them by a matter of feet, staring right through the window at them. Maybe he was starting to form his own bond with Kong, because it seemed clear what the giant was thinking.
What the hell, man?
Then they hit the wall, the next gravity inversion point, and the “sky” became the “ground.”
Again, that should have been it. In the first gravity inversion—right when they came out of the Vortex—they should have been shredded by deceleration. Simmons’s miracle machines had saved them from that; the HEAVs had done their job, absorbing and dissipating their inertia into the gravitic anomaly. But it seemed to have been too much for the engines, because now they were caught in the interior gravity of the planet—they had, it seemed, chosen one of the competing downs, and they were now hurtling toward the forest floor with exactly the same acceleration as a fall from thousands of feet from the surface. Sure, the fall wouldn’t kill them, but the sudden stop at the end would. Unless they started flying again.
“All Delta,” Nathan said. “Reverse gravity propulsion now!”
In front of him the pilot flipped switches and pulled back, but they continued their tailspin as the system refused to reboot. He watched, unable to even scream as the alien topography seemed to rise to meet them. It felt to him as if Hollow Earth was a living, sentient thing, mocking him.
You thought you could do better than Dave? You stupid ass.
Then the G’s kicked in, and all of the blood drained out of his head, and brilliant light washed everything out like an over-exposed photograph. He clung to consciousness through the white-out—barely. Distinction came back first, then color. They were alive, and the ship was leveling out.
He watched as Kong dropped down and hit a mountainside, clawed at it, alternately falling and sliding until he crashed into a lush, misty rainforest like none Nathan had ever seen. Flights of aerial creatures of some sort teemed up from around the Titan, and as the terror drained away, Nathan found himself smiling.
They had made it. Alive. Holy crap.
And it was unreal. Or rather, it was very real, and more amazing than he had ever imagined.
Ladies and gentlemen, he thought, I give you Hollow Earth.
FIFTEEN
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea
“Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1816
Hollow Earth
Kong came to ground like thunder, and with no hesitation whatsoever went down onto all fours and began to run, following a canyon that cut down the side of the mountain into a realm of complete amazement. Even from high in the air and behind him, Ilene felt that she could see the same feeling mirrored on the Titan’s face. This place was utterly strange, like no place on Earth—except Skull Island. She saw a flight of creatures that could easily be relatives of leafwings, or maybe they were more like pterosaurs—at this distance she couldn’t quite decipher the details. Waterfalls cascaded from soaring peaks, above them and below them. If there was a Kong paradise, surely this was it.
“It’s beautiful,” she murmured.
* * *
“This is HEAV 3,” the comm cut in. Nathan glanced at the radar, clocked its position just in front of him. Jia and Ilene were in HEAV 2; he didn’t know anyone on HEAV 3. There hadn’t been time to get acquainted.
“We’re getting some weird radar activity,” the HEAV 3 pilot said. “We’re going to circle back—”
The pilot was abruptly cut off as something came tearing from out of Nathan’s right field of vision and snatched HEAV 3 out of the air. The craft exploded, blinding him for a moment, buffeting his HEAV so hard he feared the pilot would lose control, but their flight quickly smoothed out, and now he could see what had just obliterated HEAV 3.
At first glance, its wings reminded him of those of a butterfly, both in sha
pe and because they were bright orange in color. It had a long, sinuous, snake-like tail, but the front of it, where the wings were, widened considerably. It was turning, obviously not particularly fazed by its crash with the HEAV, and he could not quite see the head, although it gave a brutal, blunt impression. He watched it turning, trying to get behind them, and saw the deceptively beautiful wings were supported by boney spines, extensions of the rib cage, maybe. No modified arms, like a bird or bat or pterosaur, not like any true flying vertebrate on Earth, although there was a species of lizard that had similar rib-wings used only for downward gliding. But this thing was not gliding; it was as agile a flier as any he had seen, especially given its size.
The pilot yelped, and Nathan whipped around, then screamed as he saw another one, coming straight for their windscreen, its mouth open, full of ragged teeth. And then—suddenly—it was receding. Kong had snatched it by the tail and was yanking it back toward him.
He watched, panting, as the Titan heaved the monster in an arc over his head and slammed it hard into the stony ground.
The first creature was coming back, bearing down on Kong, but he still held the tail of the one he’d grabbed. He swung it like a bat, smacking the oncoming beast away before flinging the other in the opposite direction.
The monster he had hit crashed into a cliffside, but quickly recovered, rising up like a cobra as Kong pounded his chest. Nathan could now see its head was more like a lizard or an alligator than a snake, although it looked closer to a dragon than anything else.
It struck like a snake, though, latching its toothy mouth into Kong’s arm. Once it had purchase, it quickly wrapped around the Titan like a constrictor, pinning his arms to his sides, and then folded those enormous, beautiful wings around Kong, covering his face and smothering the giant.
“All ships!” Nathan snapped. “Prepare to attack!”
An instant after his command, both HEAVs launched missiles. He watched them streak toward their target, exploding all across the monster’s wing. That must have caused it to loosen its hold, because when the smoke cleared, Kong had it by the throat, and was pulling it off of him. He crushed it against the ground, snapping the spines that supported its wings, and then picked it up again, slamming it back and forth like he was beating a rug. Not quite content with that, he then pounded it to a pulp with both of his fists.
Then the Titan turned his attention to the HEAVs. Nathan swallowed, but then he saw Kong didn’t seem to be displaying his usual annoyance. He was looking at him, Nathan, and held the contact for a moment.
You’re welcome, Nathan thought silently. But he couldn’t help feeling an unexpected swell of satisfaction. He had done good, and Kong had acknowledged it, or at least that he had not screwed up again.
So he would take it.
Kong ripped off the monster’s head and began sucking the green gunk out of it.
“That is so gross,” Simmons said, as Kong devoured the reptile.
“He’s a big, active boy,” Nathan said. “He needs his protein.”
He took a breath and found the plastic spaceman in his pocket. He gave it a squeeze.
We made it, Dave, he thought. He wished he’d thought to bring along some of the awful whisky his brother had liked.
* * *
Finished with his meal, Kong oriented himself and then started off. Ilene thought she saw a certain eagerness in his manner.
Looking for family, Jia said. Hope it’s true.
What about you? Ilene asked. Does this feel like home to you?
Jia shrugged. Home is wherever we are, she signed. You and me.
I think so too, Ilene replied.
And Kong, Jia added.
Ilene realized the HEAVs weren’t moving.
“Kong’s on the move,” Ilene said. “We gotta go.”
* * *
They chased Kong across a vast, flat plain of stone and scrubby vegetation. Ilene watched in delight as the Titan loped through what looked like a field of boulders, except that as he passed through them, some of the “boulders” scrambled away on crab-like legs. This turned out to be a bad idea for the crab-creatures; several large lizard-like monsters converged on them, now that they had given up their cover.
Across the plain, at first dim with distance but increasingly coming into sharper relief, was a mountain, jutting up from the flat landscape—and another mountain hanging down from the “sky” nearly touching it, like a stalagmite and stalactite on the verge of fusing into a pillar.
“He seems to know where he’s going,” Nathan said.
“He certainly can move,” Ilene said, feeling a swell of pride.
When Kong reached the slopes of the peak, he immediately began to climb it.
“Do you see that?” Nathan asked.
“Yes,” Ilene replied.
The stone of the mountains was seamed in blue; not blue stone, but an azure glow that seemed to be seeping from beneath the mountain. She noticed a flicker of the strange light here and there on the lower slopes, but the higher they climbed, the more pronounced it became.
* * *
“That’s the energy we’re looking for?” Maia Simmons asked.
“I’m sure it is,” Nathan replied.
“Then why not stop here?” she asked. “We can get our sample and be done with this.”
“You remember my analogy of the house wiring?”
“Of course,” she said. “You’re saying this isn’t the wall socket.”
“That’s right,” Nathan replied. “But I think it means we’re on the right track. Kong is going for the source.”
They continued following Kong as he clambered up the increasingly radiant peak, and until they reached the summit and the sheer cliff hidden behind it. Here, gravity began to invert once more. In the threshold between the two mountains boulders large and small floated in midair, caught between the two gravitational fields. Kong studied them curiously, then poked at one, pushing it toward the peak of the other mountain hanging just above them. His improvised missile struck a second boulder.
Knocked from their gravitational purgatory, the boulders crossed the inversion point and began to fall “upward” toward the opposite mountain. As they did so, they clipped a rock formation that looked suspiciously like a giant hand, partly opened, as if reaching toward Kong.
For a moment the Titan stood there, grappling with what he had just seen.
Then he pushed off with his feet, floating gently toward the stone hand. He crossed the inversion point, and then began to pick up speed. He reached for the stone hand, brushed it, and used the friction to turn and land feet first on the mountaintop.
SIXTEEN
It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things, or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or, in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world.
From Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, 1818
Somewhere under the Pacific Ocean
It seemed to Madison that the Skullcrawler eggs were pulsing, and more than once the shadows inside their translucent shells shifted. Josh yelped the first time he saw it.
“What the hell?” he said.
“It’s cute,” Madison said. “The baby is kicking.” She reached over and smoothed her hand against the shell. As she suspected, it was leathery and slightly pliable—like a reptile or monotreme egg, not the hard, brittle shell of a bird’s egg.
“You and these things,” Josh said.
“Skullcrawlers?” she said. “I’ve never seen a live one before.”
“I mean Titans in general,” he said. “The whole time I’ve known you. It’s like you’re friends with them or something.”
Madison studied Josh. He was scared, she could tell. And maybe a little mad that she had gotten him into this. Josh was a great guy, and she liked him a lot, but he wasn’t exactly the rugged adventurer type. That was actually
part of what she liked about him.
Right now, though, he seemed like he was on the verge of being an ass.
“To start with,” she said, “the Titans aren’t all the same, any more than all animals are the same. They’re different. Some of them are pretty awful. Others—others I think really are our friends.”
“Like Godzilla,” Josh said. “The ‘friend’ who just trashed half of my town.”
“He’s reacting to something,” Bernie interrupted. “Like maybe these things. Skullcrawlers in Florida? That’s not okay. The big guy knows that. Even though I think there’s also something else going on. Something bigger than Skullcrawler eggs.”
“Like what?” Madison asked.
“I told you about the circuits meant to conduct through bone,” he said. “Well, what do Skullcrawlers have in abundance?”
“Skulls?” Josh said.
“Which are made of bone,” Bernie said, tapping his head with his finger. “What if Simmons is trying to put remote controls in Skullcrawlers? Imagine an army of these things, all under the command of Apex.”
“Hang on,” Josh said. “Remote control? You mean like, telling the monsters what to do with a game controller?”
“Something like that. You know, but on a more industrial scale.”
“Like a really big game controller,” Josh said.
“That makes a horrible sort of sense,” Madison admitted. “If that’s true, a lot of other things fall into place.”
“Hang on,” Josh said. “What about your big, giant eye?” Bernie shrugged. “Maybe part of the control system,” he said. “Maybe a whole other thing. Apex probably doesn’t put all of its eggs in one basket. Not even if they are Skullcrawler eggs.” He nodded in their direction of travel. “Anyway, our answers are up there. Hong Kong. It’s a little further than I had planned to travel this time around, but you know. Anything for the truth.”
“By the way,” Madison said. “The pregnant Mothra thing—you weren’t right about that one. I know from experience.”
