by Laura Quimby
Katsu blinked slowly but didn’t take the bait. “No, just some boring business. My work begins when the mammoth is brought back.”
“What will you do with it?”
Katsu’s teeth looked small and sharp when he grinned. He reached over to collect his papers. “I will study it in great detail. Just like your father.”
I may not have known what he was up to, but he was nothing like my father. He watched me from the corner of his eye as he left the room, and I wondered if he realized that I was watching him, too.
My stomach rumbled. All this sneaking around was making me hungry. I decided to head for the mess to see what there was to eat.
When I got there, Kyle was digging through one of the cabinets. He had a grease stain on his sweatshirt and a spot on the tip of his nose that made me smile.
“Hey, I found freeze-dried chili. Want some?” Kyle asked. “No one’s here, so I think we’re on our own as far as lunch goes.”
“Sure,” I said. “That sounds great.” Actually, it didn’t. Zoey and I had done an experiment a few years back where we ate nothing but freeze-dried food for a whole week, trying to acclimate our bodies for space travel. (That was a long story, and it involved Zoey’s failed application to space camp.) All the freeze-dried meals came in shiny metallic pouches and sounded great from the description. But dried beans and meat weren’t tasty, especially after the water was added. I didn’t tell Kyle that, however.
Once we had reconstituted the chili and heated it up in the microwave, we poured it into mugs and sat down at the table. I toasted some rolls that I found in a cabinet, but it was hard to focus on the food.
“Is something wrong?” Kyle asked. “You seem sort of jumpy.”
I pushed my chili around in my mug. “It’s nothing.”
“It doesn’t sound like nothing.”
I really wanted to confide in Kyle, tell him what I had heard and ask him what he thought. But I wasn’t sure that was a good idea. What if it was nothing? What if I was overreacting? If I told him and it turned out that Katsu was fine, I didn’t want to get Dad in trouble. I decided to change the subject. “I’m just acclimating.” I took a bite of my roll.
“I know how it can be. It’s tough being away from home, especially your first time on an expedition.”
“It’s not that. Though I guess I do miss my mom and my best friend,” I said. Kyle seemed really nice, and of all the people here, he would understand, but I hesitated. “Have you met lots of other kids on expeditions?” I asked.
“Hardly ever.” He swallowed a bite of chili. “I was really glad when I heard that you were coming with your dad.”
“Really?” My pulse raced. I had no idea he would be excited for company.
“Sure. My mom works all the time, which is cool, but I get bored. You have to make your own fun in these places.” He shrugged and stuffed a roll into his mouth. “It’s tough meeting people and making friends—real friends in person, not just on the computer.”
“Well, now you have a real-life friend,” I said.
“What do you think they will find out there?” Kyle asked.
“Mammuthus primigenius,” I said with a raised chin. “Or as it is more commonly known, a giant hairy elephant.”
He snorted. “Then they’ll lug it back and study it. Take pictures, measure it, record every little detail.”
“Then the poor mammoth will probably go to a museum. So more scientists will be able to study it up close and personal,” I said.
“My mom told me that lots of indigenous people believe that removing bones and creatures from their resting place is bad luck and that to do so brings a curse.”
“You mean like the mummy’s curse in Egypt? Many of the Egyptian tombs were said to be cursed and anyone who opened them would die a terrible death.”
“Do you believe in curses?” Kyle asked.
“Maybe. Lots of archaeologists died after opening King Tut’s tomb, so it could happen.” It didn’t seem very scientific, but I had to keep an open mind.
Kyle’s eyes went wide. “Do you think mammoths bring curses? Do you think this site is cursed?” Suddenly, he jumped up and ran out of the room.
After a minute or two, I heard moaning. Then the lights shut off.
Kyle came back into the room with a flashlight held under his chin, casting a creepy glow over his face. His head and arms were loosely wrapped in toilet paper that kind of looked like the decaying bandages of a mummy. “You have entered into my tomb. You are under the mummy’s curse.” He held out his arms and lurched toward me, groaning like the walking dead. “I’m going to eat you.”
I dodged his mummy arms as he tried to grab me. “You make a great mummy,” I said. “Not very scary, though.” But then I sat down and let him wrap a roll of toilet paper around my head and shoulders.
“Join us … join the extraordinary league of mummies.”
A shiver went down my spine as he continued to wrap me in toilet paper. I decided to play along and stood up, taking the stumbling mummy position with my arms outstretched in front of me. Groaning, I followed Kyle. We stumbled around the room for a while, then headed down the hall to the rec room, where we finally collapsed onto the sofas.
I pulled toilet paper off my face. “I think we’ll find a mammoth and everyone will be happy.” Wishful thinking, perhaps. Excavation digs could take weeks to uncover real results. But Randal had brought us all out here for a reason, and we were going to find something big. We had to.
Filled with that good feeling, as well as a bunch of freeze-dried beans, I decided to tell Kyle about Katsu sneaking out of Randal’s private room.
He listened to my story intently, and when I was done, he said, “Sounds like we have only one option.”
“And what’s that?” I asked.
“We get inside that private room and see what Katsu found that was so convincing.”
I hesitated, knowing that once I agreed, I couldn’t turn back.
Kyle wiggled his eyebrows at me.
“I’ll do it, but we really shouldn’t try to break in.” But I couldn’t keep from smiling. “Who knows? The private room might be cursed like a king’s tomb,” I said, and we both laughed.
I was relieved. I didn’t have to investigate this alone.
Kyle and I were on a mission. Break into the secret room like two black-clad, stealthy panthers. Except we weren’t wearing black, unless we counted our boots, and the boots were not stealthy—more like clunky.
The plan was set. Unlike Dad, who had theorized that the room was probably just a cozy library where Randal could put his woolly socked feet up and wiggle his toes in front of a toasty fire, I suspected something else entirely. I was willing to bet that Randal had bigger secrets. Billionaire secrets. Privacy was another word for hiding place. Katsu had discovered something, and I needed to know what.
While Kyle went to borrow an extra set of keys from the mechanic he had been working with that morning, I waited outside Randal’s private room, making sure Katsu didn’t return. Finally, red-faced and panting, Kyle came racing around the corner, skidding down the hall in his nonstealthy boots.
“Slow down,” I said, casually glancing around, like I wasn’t looking. I was the lookout, which meant I stood outside the room and acted nonchalant.
“I thought you said to hurry,” he countered, a line of sweat trailing down his temple.
“I did. But it’s the first law of spying—act like you belong, and no one will question that you shouldn’t be doing what you’re doing. Running just makes you look suspicious, like you don’t want to get caught.”
“Right … spymaster.” He dangled the keys, a wry smile on his face.
“How did you get the guy to give them to you?” I asked.
“I told him that I needed to get into the supply cabinet for extra toilet paper. I don’t think he believed me, but no guy questions another guy’s need for toilet paper.”
Kyle tried three or four keys before finding
the right one. He glanced up and down the hall one last time and then carefully unlocked the door. Together we slipped inside. The smell of rubber cement filled the room. I felt for the light switch and turned it on. Immediately, my heart sank. The room was nothing more than a comfy nook, complete with bookshelves and a gas fireplace.
This was terrible! Dad had been right. Two leather wingbacks sat in front of the hearth. Nothing strange. Nothing secret. But we were inside now, so I closed the door behind us in case someone came down the hall.
I groaned, utterly mortified. “It’s just a plain old library. Randal probably comes in here to read and relax. What a waste of a locked room. How could I have been so wrong?”
“You give up fast.” Kyle smirked and studied the room.
“I wasn’t giving up,” I said. “But look around. It’s pretty obvious that this is not a great secret.”
He tapped his temple. “To the untrained eye, maybe.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Something isn’t right.” Kyle crept around the perimeter, examining the walls and the floor.
The space didn’t seem that unusual. It contained all the library essentials—bookshelves, two chairs, and a fireplace.
The only strange thing was the size. “It’s smaller than I expected.” I walked from one side of the room to the other, and it took me only a few steps.
“Exactly.” Kyle pointed at me. “And Randal doesn’t do small.”
“Randal does big—really big. And what is that rubber-cement smell? It really stinks.” I wrinkled my nose.
Kyle sniffed. “It’s coming from somewhere close.”
The heat kicked on. A vent rattled, causing me to jump.
“Nervous?” Kyle asked.
“No,” I lied. I was hoping he couldn’t hear my heart pounding in my chest.
“Let’s scope this place out. Something seems fake, like a stage.”
There was a needlepoint pillow with seals stitched on it placed on one of the chairs. A knitted mauve throw was crumpled up on the ottoman. I ran a finger along the edge of a brass lamp.
“What if this isn’t the whole room?” Kyle stepped over to the bookshelf. “There could be an entire other room behind it.” He ran his hands down the shelving unit.
“You mean … there’s a room within a room?” I pictured the map of the station I’d drawn in my notebook this morning and realized he was right. According to the layout, this room should be as big as the rec room—twice as big as it was.
Kyle shifted books around, trying to see behind them. “It should be on the other side of the shelves.”
“How do we get to it?” I asked.
Kyle shoved the books back. His face twisted up in concentration. “There has to be a trigger. Some way to get behind the wall.”
“A secret panel?” Excitement filled me. This was a puzzle—like a real-life video game. “How do we find the trick to opening it?”
“See anything that looks strange or out of place?” Kyle asked.
I studied the room again. Totally normal. It even had a fake fireplace. That was it. “The fireplace is gas. It’s not real,” I said. “Randal seems like he would have a real fireplace, with wood. Not a fake one. Unless he didn’t have a choice.”
I shifted the items on the mantel, but the fireplace didn’t budge. I flicked a switch on the wall and the flames in the hearth jumped to life. “See? Gas. Makes lighting a fire a cinch,” I said. I turned off the artificial flames and kept looking. But nothing budged.
“Wait—the switch,” I said. “There are two of them.” One turned on the fire. But what about the other one? Kyle reached over and flipped the switch.
Silently, the fireplace swung forward, revealing a secret door and a small opening.
My heart raced. “This is it!” I couldn’t believe it. “We’ve found a secret room!”
“Hurry up. We don’t have much time.”
Kyle and I slipped through the small door and into Randal’s secret room.
This was more like what I had expected. There was a giant polar bear rug on the floor, its mouth wide in a vicious roar. A huge stuffed tiger was mounted on a giant log suspended from the ceiling in the corner of the room. Randal had displayed a collection of his kills. Tiny golden plaques labeled the trophies: caribou, snow leopard, and an arctic fox.
One wall was covered with shelves filled with strange fossils. There were also dozens of sharp teeth and claws. Dad had told me once that a lot of rich collectors buy up fossils from different dig sites and keep them as souvenirs. Randal had his own treasure trove.
But the fossils weren’t the main attraction. A table about the size and shape of a Ping-Pong table dominated the space. On top of it was a huge model of a miniature world: a winter wonderland. In this snowy landscape, tiny people wore fur coats and were surrounded by dozens of tiny animals. The fake snow glittered. There was a glassy water area with ice floes and polar bears and seals swimming and resting on the chunks of floating ice. At first I thought the model was cute. Maybe creating miniatures was Randal’s hobby. But then I saw the creatures with curved tusks. The woolly mammoths. This landscape was from the past—a reenactment of a long-ago world populated with giant beasts.
“Weird. I guess Randal has a lot of time on his hands,” Kyle said.
“Wait—look at this sign.” There was a hand-painted sign at one end of the table. It read “Clark’s Mammoth Park.”
“He has a great imagination.” Then Kyle asked the question we both were thinking. “You don’t think this is meant to be a real park? Do you?”
“It seems more like a fantasy.” I reached down and ran my finger over the icy water and stroked the back of a majestic polar bear. “There are no more mammoths. They don’t exist.”
“Yeah, but this whole station is a fantasy.”
I was still admiring the model of the Arctic when I said, “Maybe that’s what Katsu was talking about with the DNA.”
“What do you mean?” Kyle looked at me dumbfounded. “What DNA?”
“DNA is a map, a blueprint of an organism’s makeup,” I said.
“Duh, I know what it is, but what would Katsu want it for?”
Dad and I had watched Jurassic Park like a million times. We had even watched the sequels. Jurassic Park was his favorite movie. It was about scientists who collected dinosaur DNA that had been trapped in amber. They used the DNA to create live dinosaurs for a zoolike park where people could come and see the formerly extinct creatures. In theory, it was pretty cool. Who wouldn’t want to see real-live dinosaurs up close? But in the movie, the dinosaurs escaped from their enclosures and ran wild, attacking the scientists and totally destroying the park. The lesson was that dinosaurs were extinct for a reason. Except, of course, not everyone got the message.
Dad had told me that some Russian scientists had dreamed of creating a park with live mammoths to help the local economy in Siberia. It was a way the scientists could bring tourists to the area, even though I couldn’t imagine the icy tundra being a popular vacation spot.
That must have been why Katsu was after the mammoth’s genetic code.
“He wants to make mammoths,” I said.
“You mean bring back mammoths, for real? That’s crazy.” Kyle leaned forward and fingered a miniature beast.
“Is it really that crazy?” I asked.
With genetic material, Katsu could clone a mammoth. From the look of this model park, Randal wanted to bring back the mammoth. This miniature scene wasn’t the past. It was the future.
“That’s impossible.” Kyle’s brow creased. “It would mean some serious science.”
“Katsu was talking about DNA on the phone with someone. It sounded like he had already gotten a lab ready. People are waiting for him to return from this trip. My dad once told me that scientists have been trying for years to gather enough viable DNA to clone a mammoth.”
“So it could happen? He could really do it?”
“I guess he could
,” I said. “I can’t really imagine a park full of mammoths. But look at this model. Randal has a lot of money. And with his money—and his ambition—it sure looks like he plans on trying.”
Kyle picked up one of the miniature mammoths. Whoever built the model had created whole herds, including adults and their young. The snowy wonderland was also covered in caribou and polar bears. It was beautiful, but it looked eerie, hemmed in by fences and viewing platforms. Keeping all the mammoths contained would be a huge feat. They were migratory animals, and they wouldn’t want to stay in one place.
“It’s like a zoo,” Kyle said.
“I can’t see keeping giant mammoths in a zoo. Even one like this,” I said. The model was beautiful but sad. I didn’t want there to be living mammoths. They would be the only ones of their kind, kept in a pen, alone, out of their own time.
“Randal’s crazy if he thinks he can really pull this off.”
I remembered how Katsu had talked about Randal on the phone. He didn’t think too highly of Randal, either. “Maybe this is a big scam, and Katsu is trying to steal the genetic material out from under Randal, preying on his dreams,” I said.
“I could believe that. Legacy is really important to Randal. This park would be a whopping legacy.”
“He has to know how crazy it is. Scientists have trouble cloning common animals that are alive today. It would be almost impossible to clone a whole extinct herd. He has to realize that this park could never happen.”
“Guys like Randal don’t know the meaning of the word impossible. Look how he built this station. And now that he’s found a mammoth, who knows what he’ll do?” Kyle said.
“I still don’t believe it,” I said. “If Katsu said he could do it, he must be lying. It’s got to be a scam.”
I almost felt sorry for Randal. Then I saw the claw of the polar bear skin rug and the room filled with trophy fossils, and I didn’t feel so bad for him. Scam or no scam, he was used to getting his prizes, whether fossil, skin, or fur coat. Now he wanted the real thing.
