“It’s almost faded away anyway,” Alan had answered. Neglect was his specialty.
The visitors were an elderly couple. They hitched their horses on the outer fence around Nimkii’s pen before Irene could warn them that he might lumber too close and spook the horses. Well, she’d have to hope he would behave for a while, although he was already staring at the animals.
“Hi! Welcome to Prairie Orchid Farm,” she said as she approached, smiling. Maybe one of them was the secure courier.
“Good morning,” the woman said without warmth. The man just stared at Nimkii, who was reaching his trunk toward the horses, sniffing. If they were couriers, of course they would be discreet about it.
“This is Nimkii,” Irene said, trying to act receptive.
“We know,” she said.
The man took out a camera drone from a backpack. “Is he really dangerous?”
“Only if he sees you as a rival, and he might,” Irene said. “This is his territory.”
The man tinkered with his drone and launched it. The woman began to walk around the pen, silent, eyes narrowed. Usually visitors liked to chat, and she had to give a potential courier a chance, so she remained near him as he directed the camera to record Nimkii from various angles.
“Why all the flags?” he said with a frown.
“The owners put them up.” He still frowned. “I’m an intern. I recently got a degree in environmental ecology at UW–Madison.” She hoped her meaning would seep through—and confirm her identity.
“Then you know.”
Know what? About rationing? About Nimkii’s substandard living conditions? About an imminent mutiny?
Nimkii approached, rumbling.
“I hope he doesn’t scare the horses,” she said. That was very possible, although they seemed more interested in nibbling the timothy grass that grew alongside the fence.
“What does he eat?”
Irene went through the list. Visitor or courier, she wanted to be friendly. “It’s based on elephant needs, with more calories for a colder climate.” She didn’t add that it was all guesswork.
And because the farm had so little money, they were feeding him trimmings from Christmas tree farms, oat straw, soybean husks, and even sawdust pellets. Despite that, Nimkii seemed healthy.
“He should be roaming free and feeding himself,” the man said. “You should just open the pen and let him out.”
She wasn’t sure if he was kidding. Nimkii ought to range freely. The thought burned every time she had it, which was often. “Well, there are farms around here, so it would cause problems.”
“So you’re saying there’s no way he can lead a natural life.”
She didn’t have a good answer. “I’m hoping to enrich his environment. Toys, more space, different foods.”
The man grunted, called his camera back, and fiddled with it for a bit. Then he said, “Look what I did.” He used his phone projector to show her not a secret message, but a video with Nimkii apparently wandering through nearby meadows—a breathtaking and heartrending vision.
He added, “That’s how he ought to live. He’d live longer.”
“I know.” I know that better than you do. And you’re not Mamá’s courier.
Nimkii trumpeted at the horses and arched his trunk. They backed off as far as their reins would let them, flashes of white around their eyes. The man rushed to untie them from the fence posts and lead them away.
“The mammoth could take care of himself in the wild,” he called to her.
Irene doubted that and wished she were wrong, but Nimkii had no experience with foraging or defending himself. Maybe she could teach him that somehow—in case things went wrong, like an epidemic delta cold or a mutiny with bad consequences. She ought to start lessons soon, somehow.
The woman joined him, and they chatted a bit between themselves, then mounted the horses and left without saying goodbye, but at least they paid the suggested visitor fee. She tried to forget about them but couldn’t.
Later, Will came home, carrying a fishing pole and three little trout in a net, set the tackle in the barn, and tied up his dog, a typically friendly chocolate-brown Labrador who deserved to be free and treated like a member of the family. Instead it was usually leashed and ignored like a piece of equipment. Will disappeared into the house with the fish. Irene had her doubts about the cleanliness of the local rivers. When Irene entered the house to get a cheese sandwich for lunch, Will and Ruby were out on the front porch, and she heard them talking about how Alan had volunteered to deliver flags. Ruby thought he had better things to do.
Irene had just finished eating when a family pulled up in the gravel driveway, two adults and a teenage son who looked glum and utterly bored. Was one of them the courier?
The parents hurried to the far side of the pen, where Nimkii was. The boy seemed far too handsome and husky for his own good, as if he’d been tweaked, even cloned. If so, did he know? How did he feel about it? Irene knew how she felt, and all Peng’s well-intentioned words about how ordinary and normal she was had left her with different conflicts, not fewer.
But if that boy was secretly a clone, too, then maybe his family was going to mutiny since he was now a second-class citizen. Maybe they’d carry a message.
Rather than follow his parents, he approached her. He wore a visor-screen, and she wondered how much attention he was paying to his surroundings.
“That’s the mammoth no one else wanted, right?” It sounded like an accusation.
She tried to blame his hostility on boredom. “The herd in the Canada mammoth range is too closely related genetically, so he needed a different home.”
“And the United States needs all our land to grow food.”
“Yes. We hardly have room for wildlife of any kind anymore. It’s sad.”
He squinted, perhaps not expecting agreement. “Is he really completely imprinted on humans?”
“You’ve done your research.” Maybe the boy wasn’t so hostile, or maybe the conversation was a cover for a handoff. “We don’t know. And it would be hard
