The Origami Dragon And Other Tales (5 page)

I don’t know
why he and the Jubilee were so far from the rest of the fleet, and
I didn’t bother to ask. Three heavyset security guards escorted me
onto the boat and up to a reception area. The guards looked like
the sort of men found in the Russian riot police, so I didn’t argue
with them. They checked my papers, frisked me twice and led me to
an unmarked door.

I entered what
appeared to be a combination of office and laboratory. Shelves of
chemicals lined the walls, and posters of complex biochemistry
pathways hung from the ceiling.

“Welcome, Dr.
Attenborough!” boomed a familiar voice from beside me.

I turned to see
a small, bearded man wearing a lab coat and carrying a beaker full
of blue liquid. He put the beaker down on a shelf and shook my hand
with gusto.

“A pleasure to
meet you in person,” I said as calmly as I could.

“Sit down, sit
down!” he ordered, pointing at a seat.

His voice was
warmer and louder than it had sounded over the earpiece.

“How is my
Park?” he asked, taking his own seat behind his desk.

Unlike the rest
of his office, Noah’s desk was tidy and uncluttered. I glanced
across his lab as I updated him on my work, which I know he had
been following closely. He asked intelligent questions, made a few
relevant suggestions and then moved on to the interviews.

“A lot of them
thought you are doing this all for the money,” I said, knowing that
this couldn’t be the case: there were far easier ways to make money
than this.

“Money? Nah,”
said Noah dismissively, “we don’t need their money, but we do need
their goodwill. Did you know that the
Parklands 1
has been
followed by a Chinese submarine for the last six months? I know.
I’ve seen the sensor data from the flock of hunter-killer UAVs that
the U.S. has been flying over the fleet. Don’t ask who showed me
that data, because they certainly weren’t meant to. Let’s just say
that the novelty of a miniature lion is a temptation better than
gold.”

I knew he was
right; Noah never sells his animals, but sometimes he gives them as
gifts. There is a herd of tiny zebra living on the White House
lawns, and I had heard that a certain hacker in Thailand has a
whale living in his bathtub. I hadn’t known that he had been using
them as bribes, but it made sense.

“I’ve had to
establish a network of such spies everywhere, and they all say the
same thing. The U.S., the E.U., China, Russia and the rest are
unhappy with us. They want our science, they want our secrets, and
they aren’t afraid to use force to get them. They only thing
stopping them is that nobody wants to fire the first shot. We have
enemies, son,
enemies
who are not above covert action. Last
year a whale was stolen from us by the Japanese, or possibly the
Russians. They think they can use our science to make themselves
great, or at least less contemptible.”

Noah banged his
hand heavily on the table in a rare show of passion. I wondered
which country he was born in, and I was never able to place either
his accent or his features.

“The Park will
be a shield of publicity, winning over popular support. Woe betide
the government that messes with its people’s entertainment. In
addition, it’s an excellent distraction from our real work,” he
continued.

“Real work?” I
asked, surprised and interested.

I knew that
Noah must have a bigger plan than just the Park. He kept telling me
that one day we will have fully sustainable populations, and I kept
telling him that the Park just isn’t large enough. We would need to
keep releasing new prey for lions, for one thing. We could never
build a sizeable enough Park on a ship. It’s just impossible; we
would need kilometres of space on which to build fake
continents.

“Real work,
yes,” Noah nodded, “Do you realise that if even a small meteorite
were to strike our Earth, almost all life would be extinguished?
It’s happened in the past at least once. There are things we might
do, if we have enough warning, like moving my fleet to the opposite
side of the oceans, giving us some protection. If we survive the
first impacts we have the supplies and technology to stay afloat
and alive for as long as it takes before the worst of the dust
storms and so on blow over. We could slowly re-establish the
ecosystems by releasing full-sized animals of the types we already
have, thus repopulating the Earth.”

He spoke so
casually that it took me a second to realise what a bombshell he
was dropping. I had already suspected that surviving such a
disaster had to be the point of the whole enterprise, but having it
confirmed by Noah himself was still shocking. His plan did make
sense and explained a lot about his organisation. Why else would we
need to be mobile, for one thing? I was disturbed by the idea that
we were being followed, but in truth it didn’t surprise me as much
as it might have.

“The Park’s not
enough, though, is it?” I asked, “Because if the meteor is large
enough there will be no surviving it by sitting on the ocean.”

“No”, he
agreed, “and there are some threats far more likely than rocks
falling from the sky. What if there is no meteor, but instead the
type of wars that poison the world for centuries? What if some
madman creates a strain of flu capable of spreading and killing
everything it touches? It wouldn’t take much, just a good knowledge
of genetics and a complete lack of concern.”

I thought about
Noah in his lab, playing with genes like a lesser mind plays with
Lego. I felt cold.

“The Park is a
bauble,” he continued, oblivious to my sudden concern, “a test
tube. The real work must be far more resilient and far more
extensive.”

He turned his
back to me and was searching for something on the shelves.

“The Park is
too fragile, but similar structures can be built deep into the
Earth. These could be many times larger than the Park, kilometres
long instead of measly metres. They will be true worlds unto
themselves, and the animals within them will live and die in
ignorance of the true nature of their surroundings. We already have
three such places set up deep underground. Shaun will supervise
one, Harry the second and my son the third. We will need at least
ten such vaults of precious life if we mean to make our survival a
certainty. I’ve been watching your work, and I think you have the
necessary skills to ensure success.”

I was
flattered, confused and worried. I could see where he was going
with this, and it was prophetic. He was convincing, very
convincing. In my mind I could already see the war, the bomb, the
space rock. The world was dying even as we talked, so it would only
take a small push to end it. I didn’t really think Noah would start
the apocalypse, but when it came it would not find
him
unprepared.

“The animals
will survive, and we can modify their environment so that they
adapt to whatever conditions we find on the Earth’s surface… and
then use these genetics to breed the full grown animals,” I
observed, “but there is no way enough humans could survive the type
of disasters you describe to repopulate the Earth.”

“No, you are
right. My son, Japeth, has been working on the solution. You
haven’t met Japeth yet, for his research consumes all of his time.
He and Dr. Adanta have come up with the perfect solution to your
problem.”

He turned to
face me, placing a box in front of me. The box itself was
unremarkable, just one of the many thousands used to house and
transport Noah’s tiny animals. I peered in and shuddered at what I
saw, my knees suddenly weak and my heart racing. I fell to the
floor, and I remember yelling at Noah. I left then, slamming the
door behind me. Noah chased after me, but I ignored him. He was a
madman, and I could have nothing to do with him.

Inside Noah’s
box were two perfect figures asleep next to each other. I instantly
recognised them as miniature
Homo sapien
. One was a man and
the other a woman, and both were perfectly formed in every way.

-from the
notes of Dr Whenson

It has now
been three decades since the day I met Rob Echosoul, that
remarkable man who lived such a dangerous life and had such strange
friends. I kept my knowledge of Rob to myself for many years to
protect both his life and my own, but his exploits were never meant
to remain hidden from the world. You may have first heard of him
during the time of the red canary drug busts, or his vendetta
against the London wing of the magical mafia. He gained worldwide
fame for his work as a mediator when the dragons returned to the
world, but my story predates all these and is set in a time when he
was a simple freelance hunter trying to make his way in the world,
pitting his wits and strength against the world and all that’s in
it.

I found him
lying dead on my lawn. It was an inauspicious start for a
relationship, but a memorable one. I gave his body a cursory
examination, but his injuries were too terrible for him to be
alive. He looked like he had been attacked by a pack of bears and
then dragged through a field of barbed wire. He looked quite, quite
dead, but I nevertheless checked him for signs of life and pulled
out my phone to call for help. He had no signs, and I had no
signal. I ran inside to use my home phone. At my daughter’s
request, I had recently bought one of those home tablet phones, and
I grabbed it. Instead of the normal screen of icons and numbers,
there was a single white sentence against a blue background.

“Take him
inside and treat him”, I read aloud. I remember thinking that was
odd, at the time. The phone wouldn’t let me make a call out. I
heard a knock on the door, which startled me. I opened it and found
the previously dead man lying against the wall. He appeared to be
gasping for breath, but otherwise unconscious.

I should have
called for help. I should have gone to the hospital, or the police,
or even just to my neighbour’s house. That would have been the
smart thing to do, but then I would never have met Alice and my
life would have remained completely normal. Instead of going for
help, I somehow dragged the man inside. Like all country doctors, I
had a black bag of all the necessary tools sitting by my front door
for emergencies, so I went to work.

I checked my
telephone again. Its screen had the word “
Good
” written
across it, and it still wouldn’t let me make any calls.

I had served as
a doctor in Afghanistan for many years, treating both soldiers and
civilians as part of the N.A.T.O. alliance, so I don’t shock
easily. He may have been dead, and then alive, but he was my
patient and it was my job to heal him. I dragged him into the spare
room, made sure that he was safe, and ran to my car. It was a
technologically advanced Land Rover, a self-driving model that
refused to start. The on-board computer flashed “
Fix him
”
repeatedly, stubbornly remaining despite my pressing every button I
could find.

“
OR
ELSE
!” the screen flashed as I exited the car.

My little
cottage is a kilometre from my nearest neighbour, a distance I
could easily run, but I didn’t want to leave my patient alone. I
went back inside.

He was still
alive, although all my experience suggested that he wouldn’t remain
that way for long. On the other hand, he had already died once that
day, so I did what I could for him, patching up the worst of his
injuries and dealing with his pain. I had to use all tricks I knew,
and by the time I was done I had used every stitch and bandage in
my bag.

His injuries,
deep lacerations, covered most of his body, and I had cut his
clothes off to treat them. He was a lean, muscular man of average
height and pale complexion, and I noticed he was covered in old
scars. I wondered where he had come from, how he had sustained such
terrible injuries, why he had come to my house. His possessions
included nothing that I could use to identify him, although his
pockets were full of the most unusual collection of odds and ends:
a small silver knife, some coins from across the world, a small
soapstone figurine of a lion, a couple of pouches and USBs. I
placed these on the bedside table and continued working. I sat with
him, expecting him to die at any moment. Somewhat to my surprise,
his vital signs grew stronger over the next hour, and it wasn’t
long before he woke up.

I was dozing
off when he finally opened his piercing blue eyes and coughed
loudly.

“Where….am…I?”
he demanded, wheezing painfully.

I told him who
I was, where he was, and how I had found him.

“And Alpha?” he
asked, trying to sit up from the bed.

I didn’t know
what he was talking about, which seemed to confuse him. I increased
his painkillers, and he dropped back to sleep. Perhaps I shouldn’t
have done that, but I was worried. I knew my young daughter would
be coming home soon on her bicycle, and then I could send her back
into town for help.

I leant over my
patient to check the bandages on his head. I started as his hand
grabbed my own.

“If you help
me, I will repay you!” he said forcefully, before slipping back on
to the bed.

I couldn’t
believe that he was still conscious after all the drugs I had
pumped into his system. I pushed him back gently, and told him that
I would take care of him. I went back to my computer and read the
message on the screen. I read it again, and a third time. There was
no mistaking the words.

I typed “OK”
with some worry.

The message
changed. I used the computer to open up my bank account, and
whistled when I saw what was now in it.

“
OK
!” I
typed again, this time with more enthusiasm.