Anjou’s jaw tightened. Arrogant bastard. I pay him. If I say they should do tricks for the funders, then Cortez should damn well show us some action.
Cortez turned to the shadowy figures lurking among the trees. “Ruby, hey-up!”
A slow, deep creaking like the groaning of a giant. A mammoth stepped into the sunlight, trunk lifted.
Butterick leaned into the window.
“That’s Ruby,” Ginger whispered. “Seven years old. She’s our herd matriarch.”
Ponderously, with head nodding at each step, Ruby approached Cortez.
Her fur straggled, catching on the grass as if a horse’s mane had grown over her whole body. Even her trunk was covered with dark fuzz. Long front legs supported humped shoulders. Eyes fringed with long lashes peered from a massive domed head. And those beautifully curved tusks, already half a yard long. Ginger had worried that tusks could become a magnet for hunters but Anjou had insisted. If I’m going to bring back mammoths, then by God, they’re going to have tusks.
The mammoth reached Cortez, sounding again that long, drawn-out groan. Delicately, she touched him with the tip of her trunk, like the pats of a sinuous hand, as he spoke to her in tones too soft for Anjou to hear. The mammoth’s shoulders were even with the top of Cortez’s head, the crown of her hairy head a foot above that.
“Mammoths,” Anjou said quietly. “With all the essential adaptations for arctic life. The fur has insulating properties that rival even the polar bears’. Elephants’ ears are large, designed to dissipate body heat in a warm climate, but to avoid frostbite, mammoth ears are small, the size of your hand. Similarly, the tails are stubby and fur-covered, almost invisible. The fatty hump over the shoulders is for storing energy.”
The mammoth’s trunk rose, turning like a periscope toward the observation blind. Her big foot stamped.
Major Butterick grinned. “I think she heard you call her fat.” He cupped both hands around his mouth and shouted, “Bring her closer!”
Damn fool!
The mammoth’s head jerked back, her tusks flashing upward.
Eeeeaahhh! With a screaming cry, she backed up two steps, then turned and hustled back into the trees.
Anjou’s teeth ground. Cortez would be pissed.
But instead of the profanity-laced reproof that Anjou expected, Cortez remained in the middle of the meadow, looking not toward the stand of spruce where Ruby had faded from sight, but to his left.
Unmoving, Cortez said, “Stay . . . quiet.”
To the side, half-hidden among the shadows, was another mammoth—a much bigger one. This one had tusks as long as Anjou’s arm curving gracefully upward.
Anjou took an involuntary step back. “Diamond,” he whispered. “Bull. Very aggressive.”
The bull snorted, flaring his little ears. He shook his head, slashing the air with his ivory sabers.
“Easy, Di,” Cortez crooned. “There’s no danger. Ruby was just startled, that’s all. Move out, big fella. Tcha.”
Stamp, stamp. Trunk raised, the bull stepped toward the blind.
Anjou tried to keep his heart from thumping too loudly. Diamond was his most impressive creation, and his most frightening. A mammoth’s sense of smell was better than a bloodhound’s, and Cortez had warned that mammoths were especially sensitive to hormones. In Diamond’s case, even a human male’s pathetic dose of testosterone was enough to spur the competitive impulse to drive away a rival.
And there was Anjou, trapped with two other men in a sardine can of a blind. Even he could smell the masculine sweat.
Diamond came closer, treading the meadow flowers into the mud.
Ginger crouched in a corner, hand over her mouth, making herself small. The corporal, eyes wide and face pale, held position strategically near the ladder.
The pudgy major stuck at the window, hands gripping the ledge, breathing heavily, a foolish grin on his face.
Anjou made a quick calculation. The blind’s platform was fifteen feet off the ground, the top of Diamond’s head about eight feet. Even with a seven-foot length of trunk, they should be safe.
Diamond was right under the window now. The breeze carried in a reeking miasma of wet fur, barnyard dung, and urine.
At a drainage port at the bottom of the wall, a furred snout appeared. Snorted.
Somewhere below the platform, Cortez was spouting nonsense. “Easy, Di. Come on, boy. It’s just a couple of tourists, nothing to worry about . . .”
The observation blind swayed, creaking alarmingly.
The snout appeared higher, poking into the major’s window, nostrils snuffling.
Butterick slowly and quietly backed away.
Right. Fifteen feet was nothing. Mammoths were smart and agile enough to brace themselves against a tree trunk to get to the highest shoots.
“That’s enough, Di!” Cortez said sharply. “Get down, you big baboon. Tcha! Move out. Tcha!”
Whatever the magic words were, the snout disappeared. Another creak, and the blind settled back into its normal position. In no hurry, the mammoth strolled back into the trees.
Ginger glared at the major. “Was that close enough for you?”
On the tour of the laboratory facility, Anjou pointed out the precision equipment the taxpayers had funded: computers, DNA sequencers, a cryogenic electron microscope, and the massive incubation tanks. The corporal asked idiotic questions; the major kept quiet, eyes hidden behind his sunglasses.
When Butterick’s helicopter finally lifted off to return to Fairbanks, Anjou turned angrily to Ginger. “What was that about? Everyone else we’ve dealt with at DevCom at least respects the science. He didn’t ask a single question about the genetic modifications.”
Ginger gazed thoughtfully after the helicopter. “I don’t think Butterick flew here to evaluate the project—he was sent to find ammunition to kill it. He’s going to write a report saying we’ve used millions of taxpayer dollars on
