Mammoth

He spent the time doing what he often did when confronted by a situation he felt inadequate to deal with. He asked himself what the hero of a romantic comedy would do. He remembered Clark Gable erecting a sheet—the walls of Jericho, he called it—in a motel room, and assuring Claudette Colbert that the wall would not be breached, correctly following the mores of the 1930s. But it was Susan who had put up the sheet, hadn't she? And this wasn't the twentieth century.

What would a modern hero do? Probably never have gone meekly to the guest bedroom in the first place, Matt guessed. But if he did he sure wouldn't have slept there. He would have strode confidently down the hallway at some romantic hour of the night to his lover's room, opened the door, and she would either have been eagerly waiting for him or he would have slipped into her bed and she would have been pretending to be asleep, and then pretend to be overpowered. Both of them would have bright, witty, sexy things to say to each other. Rudolph Valentino would have ridden all night on his camel and sneaked into her tent and ravished her, even if she resisted at first.

Nevertheless, the wee hours of the morning found him making his way carefully over the plush carpeting, his heart throbbing in the back of his throat. What's the worst she could do? Scream and shout? Throw things? He'd slink back to his room, or even out the front door and into the night, humiliated, but at least aware of where he stood.

The door would be locked, he was sure.

It wasn't. It turned easily under his hand. Now the alarm will go off, he told himself. But it didn't. He pushed the door slowly open and a wedge of light gradually widened and fell across the king-sized bed, where the covers had been turned back. Susan was lying there on her side, nude, her back to him. She rolled over and sat up on one elbow, then swung her legs over the side and sat up, facing him.

"Took you long enough," she said.

"THERE seems to be so much we need to talk about," Matt said, later, "and I can't seem to think of a damn thing to say."

"I've visualized it many times," Susan said, as she nestled herself a little more snuggly under Matt's protective arm. "I saw myself screaming and shouting for, oh, hours and hours. Then kicking your miserable ass right out the door. Then crying all night long."

"Did I say I'm sorry yet?"

"I think you did. Several times. I was a bit too busy there for a while to listen very carefully."

"In case I didn't, I'm sorry."

"You don't have to be. In a way, it's a good thing Howard showed up when he did. Just listening to you tell it like you did explained so much. I wondered why you never contacted me but through those damn postcards. I had no idea you'd been arrested."

"I never was, actually."

"You know what I mean. Abducted? Kidnapped? Whatever you want the call the atrocity they put you through. I lost a lot of faith in America tonight." "You want to know something fu

"I am. Think about it. There are a lot of places where, if the government thought I knew something they just had to have... well, I'd still be in that cell, or a lot worse one, and they'd be torturing me every day. Lots of other places they might not torture me, or at least not much, but they'd never let me loose."

"I can't believe this."

"I've had five years to put it in perspective. Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending it. It was wrong, it was immoral. Unconstitutional—though probably not illegal, if you can follow that reasoning. Bad form, poor sportsmanship, nasty and rotten and not fair, all of that. But I'm alive, and I'm out, and I never thought that would happen. Movies and books and television shows have convinced us of

that. What I found out is that some people in the government have some scruples."

"If you have a billionaire on your side," Susan snorted.

"There's that, that sure helped. I also don't doubt that even this NNSA has forms to fill out and oversight of some kind, a bureaucracy to answer to. Nobody operates with total impunity, everyone worries about a paper or electronic trail that may one day bring them in front of a congressional committee."

"Covering their asses."

"Don't knock it. There are lots of ways to cover your ass, but the best one is to not do the

crime."

Susan nestled herself back against his chest, nuzzled his neck.

"You've changed, Matt."

"Is that good, or bad?"

"It's just different. I think I like it. I think you've learned a lot."

"I have learned a lot about myself. That's a big part of what this whole crazy journey has been

about."

"I've changed some, too," she said, in a different tone.

"I want to hear all about it. Every detail."

"And I want to tell you," she said, then whispered in his ear, "but not here, and not now."

He frowned, then realized what she meant. "You think they might—"

"Sounds good to me," he said, hoping he sounded casual.

THERE was a dirt trail leading down the hill where Susan's house sat, that soon reached a small stream that bubbled over rocks and snags.

Matt followed Susan, who seemed familiar with the place. He noticed her slight limp more here than he had in the house. She seemed to pick her way over the stones a bit more carefully than he would have.

Last night in the dimness of her bedroom he had felt the puckered scar on her thigh where the bone had been shattered and poked through the skin. Her hand had immediately grasped his and tried to move it away, but he had resisted, and eventually she had let him explore the length of it. She hadn't wanted to talk about it, but eventually he got out of her that there had been three operations to put her leg back together, that there was a titanium rod where most of her femur used to be.

She wouldn't let him look at it with the light on.

Gradually they lost the magnificent view of Mount Hood and the pine forest closed around them. She stopped, and kissed him fiercely. Then she broke away and gestured toward a fallen log. "Let's sit here for a minute, Matt. There are some things I have to tell you."

He waited.

"Matt, you said you have changed. You're not the only one. When I went into this, all I wanted to do was be a part of a great experiment. I don't care about getting my name in the history books. Howard could have that, him and the gene-pushers that fertilized the eggs."

It took Matt a moment to realize that she was talking about the original project, the production of a mammoth/elephant hybrid, the job she had been hired to do. So much, so very much had happened since then; that project was ancient history, supplanted with the arrival of two live mammoths and a supply of fresh egg cells and sperm from the rest of the herd and from Big Daddy.

"I grew up in the circus. I love elephants, I loved training them, I felt I was doing some good keeping the species alive. There aren't many left alive in the wild and I felt—still do feel—that zoos and circuses were doing valuable work breeding, preserving the gene pool. I know a lot of people disagree, but that's what I felt."

"But you've changed your mind."

"Partly. Things happen." She was rubbing her thigh, not seeming to be aware she was doing it, and he wondered if it was just because it was sore from the hike. "Go on."

"I guess there's really no way to do this but to just come out and say it. I'm going to steal Fuzzy.

I'm going to do it tonight. Do you want to help?" There were so many things Matt might have said.

You're going to steal the most famous and valuable animal on the planet.

The animal belongs to a billionaire, one of the most powerful men on the planet, and one who is not always too fussy about his methods.