Mammoth

He looked over the chaos again, and knew this was the very picture of false economy.

"The elephants are all okay," Susan was saying. Elephants? God, he'd forgotten all about them. He wondered if Susan had any inkling of just how far onto the back burner he had shoved the cloning project in favor of this incomprehensible mess trying to become a time machine. "Looks like they never got into that part of the building."

"That's good," Howard said.

"They came here because they think cloning is evil," Matt said, with a small smile. "What do you figure they made of all this?" Howard didn't reply. Matt sighed. "The damage isn't as bad as it looks. Give me another week, we can probably be right back where we were."

"Keep at it, then. I'll have all the labor you need out here in the morning to get this cleaned up and sorted out."

"It won't take much. I've got one unit assembled, that one over there, and it wasn't opened. As for the rest... might as well wait until the first unit fails before we start assembling the beta version." He stooped over and picked up a clear crystalline sphere from the floor. He tossed it to Howard, who caught it in one hand. "As for the rest, it's mostly just sorting."

Howard's eyes met Matt's for a moment. Both of them knew the incident of the purloined marble would never be mentioned between them again, and that it would affect their relationship forever.

"Do what you have to do," Howard said, turning away. "Call me when you're ready to switch it on."

They watched him leave, slamming the door behind him. Susan looked around.

"All that work...," she said. "I'm so sorry, Matt."

"It's not a big deal. Lucky those idiots didn't let your herd loose. Imagine the mess that would have made. I'm going over to look at the alpha gadget. Looks like somebody whacked it with something."

He went to the table where the alpha unit lay, went around it, and regarded it from the front for the first time.

One of the little lights was on. It was the red one.

"What does that mean?" Susan asked.

"That's what I'd like to know."

He ran his hands carefully over the case, which was cool and smooth to the touch, and now sported three dimples that looked familiar. If he co

"Is it working?" Susan asked. She stood close, which was probably the only thing that could have distracted him from the gadget at that moment.

"There's a little chip inside, but I never programmed it for anything. Now it looks like it's programmed itself, enough to turn on this light, anyway."

"That's weird."

"That's way beyond weird and right into the occult. Let's take a look inside."

He opened the catches and lifted the lid. Inside was a perfect cube, seven marbles on each edge... with one marble sticking out in the dead center of the upper surface. All of the 194 visible marbles were clear as tiny crystal balls. Susan had found a Maglite on the floor where Python had abandoned it as he fled; she turned the beam on the array, just three and a half inches on each side. It sparkled magnificently, and somehow, a little ominously. Something about it didn't look right. Something about it hurt her eyes, like a distorting mirror in a funhouse.

"Can I have that?" Matt took the flashlight from Susan and ducked down, squinting as he shined the beam between the rows. He tentatively prodded the cube here and there. Nothing moved. It was securely attached to the bottom of the case, and the array of little crystal spheres resisted all his efforts to move them. He avoided, for the moment, the conspicuous single marble sitting on the top. He had the weird idea that it might be some sort of trap, that he was meant to press that marble, and that whoever had first designed and built this puzzle didn't have Matt Wright's best interests at heart.

"Refraction?" Susan suggested.

"I don't think the light could be scattered that much in such a short distance. Now, what I had assumed, looking at it, was that there would be... five cubed, one hundred and twenty-five more marbles inside, in orderly rows. That doesn't seem to be the case. So... there are more compact ways of arranging spheres, but if the ones in the center were packed like that, the ones here on the outside would reflect that crystalline structure if they were packed as solidly as they seem to be. I think they are packed in there very tightly indeed. And you know why I think so?"

"It's way beyond me, Matt. You're the mathematician."

"Not anymore. Now I'm the student. Because when I locked this box up and went home with you, there were two thousand, four hundred and one marbles in it, arranged in a stack ten high, twelve wide, and twenty long, with one orphan sticking out of the top. I think we can be pretty sure nobody opened the box to play a prank on us.

"Now we've got a cube seven by seven by seven. That's three hundred forty-three."

"So where are the..."

"Two thousand fifty-seven." He looked back at the shining cube.

"I think they're all still in that cube, in a multidimensional crystal structure. I think we're seeing just one side of an object folded through space."

HOWARD was walking toward Kraylow with the intent of giving him instructions for the rest of the night, when the man's jaw dropped open in amazement. Howard frowned... and something like a big black snake flashed past him, not a foot from his right shoulder. Kraylow saw it coming and dived to his right. The snake hit the ground and popped and hissed for a moment. Howard realized it was a severed power line, now drooping from a pole directly in front of him. He turned around. The warehouse was gone.

FROM "LITTLE FUZZY, A CHILD OF THE ICE AGE"

Elephants love to splash around in pools and mud. Mammoths were very much like elephants, and they loved to bathe, too. Fuzzy liked it so much that when he smelled a watering hole he got very excited, and wanted to dive in as soon as he could!

Mammoth children were just like any other children. Sometimes they didn't think before they ran. And sometimes they ran off when their mother wasn't looking. That was when they could get into big trouble!

Then he saw it, a big circle of trees with the shimmer of water in the middle! There was also the smell of mud baking in the sun. Fuzzy loved to roll in the mud! He started walking faster.

About this time Temba noticed that little Fuzzy was nowhere to be seen. She turned in a circle, looking for him. She flapped her ears, listening for him, and lifted her trunk, trying to smell him.

She caught his scent on the wind, and another scent that she remembered, a bad smell that meant death and suffering. She trumpeted loudly!

Come back, little Fuzzy! her cries rang out.

Then she called to the herd. Every ear turned to her at once! She was already moving, walking very fast toward the bad scent.

Fuzzy had come to the pond. It was peaceful and quiet. Ducks were swimming on the water. Fuzzy stood for a moment at the top of a small muddy hill and looked at it.

Maybe, just for a moment, he wondered if he should go back to his mother and tell her about the water and the whole herd could bathe in it.

But the day was hot and many flies were buzzing around his head, and little Fuzzy hated that, like all elephants and mammoths. He wanted a nice cool coating of mud matted into his too-long fur to keep the bugs away. So he started down the slope, and soon he was slipping and sliding, feet out in front of him, down on his knees.

Wheeeee!

He hit the water with a splash... and he stuck fast! There was some bad-smelling sticky black stuff beneath the water. He was in it up to his chest. He struggled, he tugged, he pulled, he slapped the water with his trunk and almost got that stuck, too. He was as stuck as Br'er Rabbit with the Tar Baby.