Her brow furrowed. “I’ve caught a few.”
“Ever deliver a hundred-pound baby? One of the mammoths has gone into labor, and it looks like she’s having a hard time.”
CHAPTER 36
Labor pains
Estelle shivered, and not from the cold, as she followed the taciturn Cortez down the hill. Mammoths. Extinct for thousands of years. From a distance, they were a curiosity, like seeing a giraffe in a zoo. But up close, they were real, and big, and menacing.
At their approach, the mammoths turned sideways, each training on Estelle a huge long-lashed eye. Deep growls seemed to come from their thick bodies rather than their throats.
This is crazy. I wanted a rescue, and I get drafted to play midwife to a beast out of a horror movie. Annie had perked up a little after being fed and wrapped in the down sleeping bag, but her cough was getting worse. We should be getting her to a hospital. Instead, I’m delivering some government-created monstrosity.
A light voice piped up from behind them. “Wait for me!”
“Sera?” Estelle’s stomach did a flip. That girl is going to turn my hair gray for sure.
Sera hustled up to them, darting between mammoths as if she were dodging tourists on Bourbon Street. “I thought you might need your med kit.” She breathlessly handed over the red bag, her eyes wide with awe and mischief.
Cortez muttered Spanish profanities under his breath.
“You shouldn’t watch this,” Estelle said. “Fainting out here would be a very bad idea.”
Sera sniffed. “I didn’t faint, not really. And since then I’ve lived through a plane crash and a volcano eruption without fainting, haven’t I? A mammoth being born is the most exciting thing in my whole life and I want to see everything.” She pulled out her phone and snapped a photo.
“Wait,” Cortez said. “You can’t . . .”
Sera pocketed her phone. “I won’t post anything, I promise—at least until it’s not a secret anymore.”
“Please don’t,” Cortez said. “Now, stay alert and stay close to me. These aren’t pets, you know.” As he led them past hairy bodies, he held on to Sera’s arm as if he feared she would do something foolish. Something else foolish.
“Why aren’t they bigger?” Sera asked. “I thought mammoths were supposed to be huge.”
Cortez answered something about genetic engineering, gestational optimization, and genes from a pygmy mammoth—which sounded to Estelle like an oxymoron.
“They look big enough, thank you very much,” she murmured. The hairy back of each mammoth was taller than her, and those tusks looked as threatening as chainsaws.
One of the beasts recoiled with a sneezing huff.
“Yeah, you don’t smell so good to me either.” Sera sidestepped a plop of partially digested grass as big as her head.
Cortez held up a hand. “Stop. Let them get to know you.”
The hose-like trunks sniffed and blew, touching Estelle and Sera with a creepy delicacy.
Pretend they’re dogs. Big, hairy, friendly dogs coming up for a good sniff.
Estelle didn’t like dogs much, either.
One laid a trunk on her shoulder, a weight that could drive her to her knees.
“None of that, Turq.” Cortez pushed the trunk away.
Sera stroked the fur on a sinuous trunk. “Turk? They’ve got names?”
“Why shouldn’t they? Turq is short for Turquoise. The one in labor is Opal. She’s over there.”
Opal stood away from the others, her rear legs awkwardly parted. As they approached, another mammoth moved to place herself between the humans and the laboring mother.
“It’s just me, Ruby,” Cortez crooned. “I brought friends.”
As if he’d uttered the secret password, Ruby stepped aside.
“Wait here.” Humming and uttering calming words, Cortez went to the straining mammoth and ran his hands over her belly.
Estelle wasn’t sure what to make of Cortez. The trooper was easy enough to understand: unpretentious but confident, a calm authority overlying his cultural diffidence. But Cortez, while completely at home with the mammoths, seemed as skittish of people as the semiwild animals he shepherded.
“Here, Doctor,” he said. “The birth passage is long and takes a sharp turn around the pelvic bone.”
Estelle was willing to take his word for it. “You’re very good with them. The mammoths, I mean.”
“I’ve been taking care of them since they were born.”
“Oh, good,” Estelle said. “Then you must have attended births before. Because I have to tell you, beyond a few litters of puppies, I’ve never delivered a nonhuman.” Sera sent her a worried glance.
“I’ve observed elephant births several times,” Cortez answered. “Mammoths, only once. Mostly, they’ve had no trouble. But Opal . . . I’m worried. She shouldn’t be struggling like this.” He shook his head. “Maybe I pushed her too hard, all that walking. I should have let her have more time to rest.”
“Sometimes these things happen,” Estelle soothed, as she would to any new father. “No matter how many precautions we take, birth can be dangerous.”
Cortez bit at a fingernail. “Yes, well, this baby might be bigger than Opal can handle.”
Estelle’s tone sharpened. “Why do you say that?”
“Her baby is genetically engineered, like the others. In this case, engineered to be a little bigger.”
Small mother, big baby. That didn’t sound good. “I better take a look.”
Estelle approached cautiously. The nursemaid mammoth growled a warning, but Cortez quieted her with a few words.
Considering the size of the animal, the mammoth mama’s breathing was quick and shallow. Estelle touched Opal’s abdomen. The long, shaggy hair hid a soft fur undercoat. Beneath that, the thick hide covered taut muscles. There was a ripple of movement under her hand, and the mammoth let out a low moan. A contraction. But most animals didn’t strain at births the way humans did—the lack of progress was worrying.
Estelle couldn’t see anything helpful under all that hair. The birth opening seemed to face downward,
