The Origami Dragon And Other Tales (3 page)

“Just a few
more, and then a cuppa,” said Shaun.

Our morning’s
work was almost complete. The trees we had planted were part of the
Park’s scrubland, an area that was still under construction. The
section was already covered with a mix of grasses, but we would
need more diversity to keep the animals happy. First we would plant
the large trees, and then move onto the bushes and smaller plants.
Over time, some of the species might die off, but others would
spread out across the land. Eventually the ecology would be totally
self-sustaining, or at least that was the plan. The Park was small
enough that it would probably always need our intervention on some
level.

The trees were
small and beautiful, each one a work of art. They were bonsais, but
their diminutive forms were due to genetics rather than pruning and
nurturing. There were over two hundred species of tree in the Park,
and the labgardens were coming up with more on a regular basis.
Planting trees was a delicate task, and it was made even more
difficult by the animals’ curious intrusions. A couple of birds
pecked at my hands inquisitively. I recognised them as some form of
parrot, but they were too small and too fast for me to be sure
about their species. The Park is full of life, and even I struggle
to keep up with the different species.

A male lion
roared nearby, scaring the birds away. I could see a couple of
monkeys were already investigating the tree I had just planted. The
vervet monkeys,
Chlorocebus pytherythrus
, were my favourite
animals in the Park. Their antics made me laugh, and even the
normally serious Shaun smiled as he saw them at their play.

As we planted
our last trees Shaun waved for a pick up. The now-empty trays were
pulled into the sky and replaced with the tethers that we attached
onto loops on our harnesses. The tethers were in turn attached to
the end of long ropes suspended from the Park’s ceiling. Shaun
checked my attachments carefully, and then used his small radio to
signal that we were ready. The Park’s sky was criss-crossed by
metal rafters that supported a variety of small engines used to
suspend and transport both supplies and people across the Park
without interference. They were temporary; most would eventually be
removed when the work was done.

The Park began
to drop away as we were pulled upwards, revealing its shape to me
as I flew away from it. The Park was set out as a long oval, one
hundred and twenty-three metres wide and six hundred and twelve
metres long. It was bordered by warm ocean water. The small trees
and animals made it look much larger than that, and I experienced a
tingle of vertigo as we pulled away. I felt like a god as I looked
down on the tiny herds and forests.

The Park was
just as beautiful from far above as it was from the ground. Ragged
forests covered about a quarter of it, and the rest was scrubland
and grassland. A few large hills were scattered throughout the
Park, some of which were the origin for the streams and rivers
which wound their way across the lands until they met the ocean. A
couple joined up, forming a lake that became an estuary. The Park
was dedicated mostly to savannah, and was home to a couple of herds
of various herbivores and a pack of lions. A flock of birds took
off from the estuary, possibly scared by the roaring of a
hippo.

I could see
herds of animals browsing across the grass, a small herd of
elephants drinking at one of the rivers. I expected that the herd
was a group of young males, and I made a mental note to check up on
them as I was pulled up to a girder and climbed up onto one of the
metal walkways that hung from the ceiling. The ceiling was a dome
that encompassed the entire island and its surrounding waters. It
peaked at twenty metres above the island, and we had to move
carefully to ensure we didn’t fall. Any stumble would do incredible
amounts of damage to the island and would certainly be fatal to us,
too. Birds were rare up here, their presence discouraged by means I
did not fully understand.

Shaun and I
made our way across the ceiling until we reached a door set into
its side. We were met there by Harry, another of the Park’s senior
workers.

“You guys want
to see something really special?” he asked us, clearly excited.

Working in the
Park was one surprise after the other. I had been looking forward
to my morning cuppa, but Harry’s excitement was contagious.

“This better be
good,” Shaun grumbled good-naturedly.

“Prepare to be
amazed, old timer,” answered Harry.

Shaun and I
waited as Harry talked quickly on his radio to somebody hidden in a
control room overlooking the island. Harry smiled at us and waved
our attention over to the island. Nothing happened.

“Nothing’s
happening,” I offered, and Shaun chuckled.

He stopped when
he saw the curtains of thin mists falling from the dome down to the
island. There was no wind to drive the rain across the island, but
Harry promised us that it was at the top of his to-do list. We
watched the rains for ten long minutes as they bathed the island.
Each raindrop was tiny enough that it wouldn’t hurt the animals
below. What looked to us like a light dusting probably felt like a
monsoon to the animals. This was the first time rain had fallen on
the Park, and many of the animals would be surprised by it.

It was
brilliant work, and Harry was right to be proud of it. I knew Noah
would approve.

“What’s the
external weather like?” I asked Harry as we walked towards the
staff room.

It was easy to
forget that there was a world outside of the Park. The light levels
were carefully regulated from within the dome, as was the
temperature. Most days I didn’t see the natural sky at all, but I
still liked to know what was out there. Harry gave a small shrug,
as if the real world wasn’t terribly relevant.

“Couple of
storms passing by, but we should miss the worst of it. We should
still make the port on time.”

The Park was
built on the top of a converted supertanker that Noah bought cheap
when the oil industry went under. It was officially called Parkland
1 and was the largest of Noah’s fleet. The Parkland 1 was a member
of the largest class of tanker built, over half a kilometre long.
The Park and its surrounding ocean covered almost the entire
surface, with the control tower and a helipad pushed right to the
back of the ship. Due to its size, even the worst storms barely
moved the ship. The animals may have felt the occasional ripple,
but nothing to alarm them. Below the Park were the machinery and
stores that keep the precious life alive, and a second level
dedicated to marine and fresh water ecologies which, while
beautiful, were not as impressive as the Park itself. There were
also quarters for the ship’s hundred or so crew, and a number of
storage and control rooms.

Noah didn’t
believe in putting all his eggs in one basket, so I knew of at
least one other ship being outfitted in a similar manner to the
Parklands
. If the fleet was large enough there would be no
need for land-based labs or test areas. I wondered if that was
Noah’s goal. He liked to be mobile.

“He sure does,”
Shaun said when I offered this observation.

We watched as
Harry poured five packets of sugar into his cup of coffee, tasted
it, and poured in three more. Harry always had eight sugars with
his coffee, so I was never sure why he bothered to taste after
five. Shaun, who drank his coffee black and sugarless, looked on
with disdain.

“What’s he
like?” I asked, wondering if either man had actually met the
elusive man who captained our enterprise.

I had read
Noah’s wiki page before taking the job. There was little known
about him, other than he was a master geneticist with seemingly
infinite money. I wasn’t even sure that ‘Noah’ was his real name,
and he only ever contacted me by email.

“Noah’s the
most demanding person you will ever know,” said Shaun, finishing
his coffee as he stood up to leave.

I had my own
work to do, back in my office. I was fairly new to the ship and
still got lost in the maze of corridors, so Harry offered to walk
with me. We stopped outside my office, which was labelled “Dr
Attenborough, Ecology”.

“Any relation?”
Harry asked me as I opened the door.

It was a
question I was familiar with.

“Sir David
Attenborough was my great-great-great grandfather. He was the
reason I became an ecologist, although by the time I graduated
there was little enough ecology for me to work on. These days when
I watch the documentaries I can list the animals now extinct. There
were no lemurs left in Madagascar by the time I got there.”

It was a
sobering thought for both of us.

“But I’ll show
you what I’m working on,” I offered.

We sat down in
my little office, Harry on my chair and me on the corner of my
desk. I opened up the latest list of animals in the Park.

“There are
eighteen species of mammal in the park, twelve birds, eight
reptile, twenty-seven insect, ten fish, two amphibian. I keep
telling Noah that we need more insects, but apparently they are a
challenge. Some species don’t flourish in the Park, and we have to
keep rereleasing them. The insects are the worst, but the mammals
always do well,” I explained.

Harry was
inspecting some of the animal figurines that littered my desk. Each
has some significance to me, and I had printed most of them myself
on various 3D sculpting devices. Harry was young, so it was fairly
likely that there were some he didn’t recognise. He picked up a
female praying mantis and turned it over in his hands like it was
an alien artefact. I was familiar with many of the
Mantodea
species from my teaching work as a university academic. I used them
to teach my students about predator-prey dynamics. My
undergraduates thought that watching a glass cage of the mantis was
wonderfully wild; I thought it was all so tragically tame.

“Do you know
that, with the exception of insect interactions, this Park is the
only place where predators still stalk their prey?” I asked, “The
only place where animals have to hunt and run and fight to survive?
Sure, the animals are miniatures, but their struggles are as large
to them as to any other beast.”

“But animals
are still kept in the zoos,” Harry said.

I wondered if
he was testing me on Noah’s behalf.

“Zoos breed
mediocrity,” I said, “and their breeding programs are about
quantity, not quality. Their lions are slow, their giraffe have bad
eyesight and the baboons are lazy, but none of that matters because
they don’t have to find their own food or keep themselves safe. Our
animals do, and it shows. Only the best live to breed.”

“So a lot of
our animals will die?” said Harry, seemingly genuinely
surprised.

“Yep,” I said
with a smile, “but if this seems cruel to you remember that at
least our animals have a chance. Out in the world they have no
chance, because one day the zoos will close forever.”

Harry and I
made lunch plans for later and he left. I picked up my model of a
yellowfin tuna,
Thunnus albacares
, and it sparked a memory
of when I had been part of the problem. I had originally
specialised in terrestrial species interactions, but in the decade
since I completed my Ph.D. every species I studied had become
effectively extinct. I ended up modelling fish populations for the
U.N., but one day I was staring at my computer screen and I just
gave up. I was trying to see how much flesh we could squeeze out of
the ocean before the inevitable collapse, and it was killing my
soul. I was siding with the devil, and I knew it. The yellowfin
were long gone, but the human appetite was insatiable.

I quit that
very hour and spent the next two years travelling the world in the
hope of finding some part worth protecting. I found a few oases of
hope, but they were besieged on all sides. Our generation, like the
ones that preceded it, exploited the Earth for all it was worth.
Unlike past generations, we inherited an Earth too weak to survive
us. It seemed that the majority of scientists believed that all we
could do was record a few genetic codes for the sake of
remembrance, noting each species as they walked two-by-two into
oblivion.

I was one of
the few who fervently hoped that we could do better than simply
being the scribes of extinction, so I took the university job in
the hope that I could change the next generation. I soon found that
my students thought biology occurred in test tubes, and had taken
my class out of historical interest rather than any real passion.
My students hadn’t seen a forest that hadn’t been planted for the
sake of woodchips or marvelled at the elegance of the hunt. For
them, ecology occurred in glass tanks and metal boxes, the wonders
of the world reduced to curiosities and amusements.

I remember that
many of my colleagues at the university were trying to work out how
Noah was miniaturising his animals. No one knew if he was a madman,
a genius or a fraud. When he called me up and offered me a job, I
took it immediately. He chose me because I was old enough to
understand the world’s problems and young enough to think they
could be solved. I arrived on the ship to find a figure of a vervet
monkey waiting for me on the bed.

My computer
pinged a reminder that it was time to work: two days until show
time. I had so much to do.

Later that
afternoon I visited one of the labs to check out the three new
species scheduled for release. Dr. Emzara was in charge of the labs
on the
Parklands
1 although rumour had it that she was also
a very senior member of Noah’s inner council. She was a large woman
with a ruff of thick hair and a surprisingly tough handshake. She
welcomed me eagerly and showed me what she had. One side of the lab
was dominated by shelves of animals in transparent cartons the size
of shoeboxes. Dr. Emzara pulled one off the shelf so that I could
have a closer look. Inside was a family of baboons, their hairy
forms unmistakable. She moved them carefully, but they were still
unhappy about the disturbance. I noticed that a number of tree
trunks and rocks had been placed in the carton so that the animals
would have somewhere to hide. It looked like a model version of a
zoo enclosure.