Mammoth

"So, Matt, you're back at last. I guess you know what my next question is."

"Should I speak real loud for the NNSA mikes?" Matt asked.

"Doesn't matter much. They're watching me, too. They'll find out what you say."

"All right, then, Albert, or Mister Argyle Socks, or whoever else has this place bugged, I'm sorry

to bring bad news... but I haven't learned anything." Howard looked at Matt blankly. The words didn't seem to have any meaning for him. He said

what people often do when a statement is unacceptable to them:

"What do you mean, you haven't learned anything?"

"I. Haven't. Learned. Anything. You want me to say it again?"

Howard couldn't seem to come up with a response.

"Howard... it was always an iffy thing. I told you I had a... a notion. A hint. A glimmering of something, if you will. I thought it might lead somewhere. It didn't. I'm at a dead end. It was either a fluke, an act of God, a cosmic joke, or something that is just beyond the capacity of my poor, abused brain. I'm through. I give up. I quit."

Matt looked theatrically around the room, and held his arms out, wrists together.

"You hear that, Mr. President? Come on, arrest me again, run me through the wringer. Fuck you all!"

Matt found himself shaking with rage. He knew he had suppressed it for a long time. Maybe it was being near Susan again, the bitterness of the five years without her that had been lost, gone and impossible to get back, and the very strong possibility that he would never get her back at all, and who could blame her? He got himself back under control again quickly, sat back and glanced at Susan, who was smiling strangely at him, then at Howard.

"Well, that's just not good enough, goddamnit. I know you're lying."

Matt couldn't think of anything to say to that.

"Howard," Andrea said, gently, "if he hasn't found the answer, it will have to be good enough."

"No, goddamn it! You lost my warehouse, all my pregnant elephants, the original time machine and all the duplicates, my frozen mammoth, my caveman and my cavewoman, my—"

"Cavewoman?" Matt asked. "You never mentioned any cavewoman."

Howard seemed to realize he had said more than he intended. He really had been shaken up.

"It was none of your business. After we got the mammoth sperm there wasn't any pressure to deal with the rest of it. The woman had no metal objects on her. So I deferred to Rostov, my mammoth expert, who wanted to do the recovery properly. Very, very slowly. Then Rostov came down with pneumonia from working in the cold, and the work was shut down for a while. Then he died, and I was looking for a new mammoth expert when... well, when the whole project vanished."

"A woman," Matt said.

"Probably a woman."

"You should have told me about that."

"I didn't see it was relevant to your work."

"You should have told me."

Never defend yourself. Attack. "Screw that. I'm telling you I think you're lying, and I'm

going—"

"Howard, you owe him an explanation."

He took a moment to calm himself. Andrea was trying to teach him a more forgiving outlook on

things and he was trying to learn. He took a deep breath.

"I didn't tell anybody, because Indian tribes have been raising such an uproar over the remains of what they claim were their ancestors. They have been burying priceless anthropological specimens,

bodies we could learn a lot from, and... well, you get in the habit of secrecy."

"It might have had a bearing on my research."

"How?" "You just don't hamstring a researcher that way. You tell me everything, and you let me decide what's important."

"I don't work for you anymore, Howard," Matt pointed out. "And I don't particularly like being called a liar."

"How do I know you haven't been lying right from the start? We all knew you were hiding something but we could never figure out what it was. I've wondered for a long time if those government people were a bit too heavily invested in their lie detection technology. I've been wondering if you just happen to be so good a liar that the machines can't catch you. I've had it researched, it is possible to fool them."

"My understanding is that psychotics are best at it," Matt said.

Howard was about to reply to that when Susan stood up.

"That's the third time you've called Matt a liar. Get out of my bouse."

"Your house? This house belongs to me, and you know—"

"It may belong to you, but it's my legal residence, and as long as it is I determine who is welcome in it. Matt is my friend, and I won't have him insulted in my house. If he says he's telling you the truth, he's telling you the truth. Now, please leave."

Howard stood there, stu

Andrea stood up and took Howard's hand.

"Howard, let's go," she said quietly. Matt thought she looked a little confused and conflicted. There had been a lot for her to absorb in the last hour, much more than for any of the rest of them. She needed time to think it all over. In the meantime she was shrewd enough to know nothing good could be accomplished here tonight by dragging out an unpleasant scene.

Howard seemed to realize that too, finally, and his posture gradually softened and he looked away from Matt and allowed himself to be led toward the door. But he couldn't resist a parting shot.

"You haven't heard the last of this," he said.

Matt stayed silent until they had gone. Then he stood and turned to Susan.

"Have I cost you your job here?" he asked. "Hah! Doesn't he wish?" She saw his uncomprehending look, and shook her head wearily. "I haven't filled you in on my wonderful life yet, have I? No, don't worry, I'm not angry, I was a lot more interested in hearing your story than telling mine. But I'm going to fall asleep right here on the carpet if I have to talk or listen any more tonight. We'll have to save the rest for tomorrow, okay?"

She looked away from him.

"There's a guest room at the end of the hall upstairs. Nobody's used it since I moved in—I don't have much of a life, outside of the park—so there are no sheets on the bed. I'll go up and—"

"It's not a problem, Susan. I've slept on much worse, believe me."

"You'll have to tell me all about it tomorrow." She suppressed a yawn. "Well, are you okay for tonight, then?"

Other than having a broken heart? "I'm fine," he said.

She moved to him a bit awkwardly and gave him a sisterly kiss on the cheek, which hurt more than a punch in the nose. But she lingered for a moment and whispered in his ear.

"You were lying to Howard, weren't you?"

He kissed her cheek, and whispered, "Yes."

MATT stood for almost an hour by the luminous dial of the watch he had worn religiously since the first day of his release from the prison cell in New Jersey, something he had not done in his earlier life. The moment he hit the street he had been seized by a powerful desire to know what time it was, to always know what time it was. Eight weeks in a cell where the lights were never turned off could do that to you. It was a Seiko solar-powered radio chronometer with a stainless steel case and embedded electronics; you could drop it from the Resurrection Tower and run over it with a tank and it would still keep perfect time from the Naval Observatory atomic clock.