Mammoth

by John Varley

  Eventually they had a meeting. Python was disappointed, naturally enough, at the old ragbag who had talked so tough. Droopy knew he had to win Python's respect quickly, so he trotted out some of his best stories of clashes with abortion doctors. Python listened with distaste—he had been the proximate cause of several abortions himself—but remembered the old man's fervent views on this new evil of cloning, and knew that in a holy fight it was sometimes necessary to do business with people you would scorn in a perfect world. After a while, cautiously, Python added a few stories of his own. Droopy didn't mention that he'd hunted deer and rabbits all through his childhood to put food on the table. He hadn't held a gun in fifteen years, but the memories were still fond.

  Python resembled that kraut actor, Maximilian Schell, but just missed being handsome. There was a burn scar on the side of his face, and he was missing the pinkie finger from his right hand. A mink had bitten it off while he was freeing her and five hundred of her sisters from a ranch, which he called a concentration camp. Served him right, Droopy thought. Vicious little monsters, minks.

  When Droopy mentioned the name of Howard Christian, Python's eyes narrowed with interest. So he went heavy on that angle, and soon was sitting in Python's car on the way to look over the mammoth project warehouse.

  Python liked what he saw from the start. The warehouse was in an area of similar warehouses, hardly worth a second glance except for the unarmed guard sitting in a booth beside the door into the building. The whole property was surrounded by a ten-foot chain-link fence topped with coils of razor wire and there was a thirty-foot strip of bare concrete between that and the target. The people who worked inside parked their cars there. They gained access by punching a number into a keypad mounted on a pole, which caused an electric gate to roll back.

  Python drove all around the building, then parked his van a hundred feet away and watched the gate for a while. Droopy slumped in the right seat.

  "Couldn't sit here too long without that guard getting interested, if he's doing his job," Python pointed out. He looked in the backseat. "That's why you'll come in handy, Lamb." Python, who loved intrigue, had never asked for the names of his companions, and had certainly never given his own. He had code-named them Lamb and Turtle. "You're out here every day?"

  "By now that guy doesn't notice you any more than he does a rock or a tree," Python said. "Let's do it."

  IT didn't take long. Lamb/Martyr stood in his usual spot, calming down gradually when he realized no one noticed him casually lifting a tiny pair of opera glasses to his face whenever someone entered the grounds. The second morning he got the right angle on it. The number was 4-1-5-3-9. He knew, sadly, that they would go in that night.

  Python wasn't a smash-and-grab guy, like Droopy. Hit fast, hit hard, don't worry about who gets hurt. Droopy wanted to steal a dump truck and crash right through the gate and the door, knock the guard on the head, and start tossing Molotov cocktails. Then dump a load of cow manure all over the place.

  Python liked the cow manure part, but the rest of it sucked. He liked to keep things simple, minimize the violence to bystanders—after all, the guard wasn't cloning monstrosities in test tubes—and maximize the time to do as much damage as possible. Contrary to every Hollywood movie you ever saw, if you started hitting people over the head, sooner or later somebody would be killed.

  "The gate is wired," Python pointed out, "otherwise a Cyclone fence is a joke. Pair of wire cutters, and you're through. But if we breach it, an alarm goes off in the guardhouse, and the police are probably called. We get five minutes, tops."

  "It doesn't take long to throw a firebomb," Droopy pointed out.

  "Yeah, and it's a metal building, and we'd have to be sure we hit something flammable inside. And don't forget, there's half a dozen elephants in there. You want to be the one to clear them out?" Python had already decided that freeing the elephants was out of the question. It was one thing to free a lab full of rats and rabbits or a fur farm full of minks, but he knew even that could go badly wrong. Remembering, he rubbed the stump of his little finger. Who could have known such a little bundle of fur like a mink could be so aggressive, and bite so hard?

  "We go tonight, at midnight."

  THE first part went smoothly, if slowly. Droopy insisted on going along. He saw it as his swan song, and he wouldn't be denied. Python seethed, slouched down in the anonymous rental van where they had been sitting for almost five hours. The guard made a slow circuit of the warehouse every half hour, inserting a plastic card in a time clock halfway around to register that he had actually made the trip. It took him about five minutes. That should be just enough time.

  Python got out of the van and no interior lights came on. He carried a big Maglite flashlight and a crowbar, the all-purpose tool of the serious vandal. He wore a black backpack bulging with cans of paint wrapped in towels. Paint was needed to write slogans on the walls, and could do an amazing amount of damage when sprayed into the delicate innards of scientific equipment. That could be done before getting down to the soul-satisfying work of smashing everything in sight that was smashable. In a biology lab, that was going to be a lot of stuff.

  He hurried to the gate and punched in the number Lamb had obtained. The gate immediately began to roll back, not silent, but not very noisy, either. He turned around, itching to go...

  And they're off! he thought. Lamb and Turtle were almost halfway to the gate, Lamb with his Bible in one hand and his rosary and a crowbar in the other, Turtle jerking his walker ahead one step at a time as fast as he could move it. It was a toss-up which was moving slower, the hot-blooded old man or the reluctant monk.

  Python had decided that getting inside in one step would be cutting it too close. His watch read

  12:04 when they reached the group of Dumpsters against the warehouse wall. He shoved one out and hurried his accomplices behind it, then pulled it back exactly as it had been. They heard the guard's footsteps go by, not ten feet away from them, and continue on. They heard him settle down on a squeaky swivel chair. Python edged one eye carefully around the Dumpster and saw the man pick up his paperback book and start reading again.

  It didn't smell very good back there. He identified elephant dung, rotting vegetables, and a sour whiff mixed with Old Spice, which he knew was coming from Turtle, as he had smelled it for the last five hours in the van. He heard a sound, like dry sticks cracking. He sighed. If the popping of Turtle's cervical vertebrae didn't bring the guard, they'd be okay, he figured.

  The guard left again precisely at 12:30. As soon as he rounded the corner Python's ragtag commandos hurried over to the warehouse door as fast as they were able. They punched in the number and the door opened. Python glanced at the guard's paperback as they passed. It was Why Me? by Donald E. Westlake.

  There were a few lights on, high overhead. As soon as he turned on his flashlight, he knew a mistake had been made.

  Many of his colleagues had never set foot in a laboratory except to destroy it, but Python knew his way around from college classes. He knew the sort of equipment a cloning facility should have, and as he swept the room with his flashlight he saw none of it. The machines he did see were more suited for the practice of metallurgy or physics. There were complicated lathes and drills, a furnace, a mass spectrometer. What was just as important was what he did not see. He didn't see any glassware. He didn't see a gene sequencer.

  Out in the middle of the half-empty, cavernous room were some ordinary folding cafeteria tables. They were covered with some sort of assemblies, built into aluminum cases. What the hell? Python swept his flashlight beam over the array. It would have been beautiful if it hadn't been so puzzling: marbles in every color of the rainbow.

  He turned, examining the other item of interest and frustration, a huge rack of hundreds and hundreds of cubbies, or caches, each containing marbles of the same type. At the bottom of each cubby was a number, but looking closer, he could see the numbers had been painted over what looked like Chinese charac
ters. Chinese? The whole thing looked like it might be intended to assemble models of molecules, the kind you could see in a high school biochem lab.

  Putting aside what he didn't understand, Python swept his light around the room again, and it came to him. Not enough. Not nearly enough space in here.

  "Where did they bring the elephants in?" he whispered to Lamb. "Which side of the building?"

  But Lamb didn't really hear the question. He was in a state of Rapture.

  The concept of Rapture was not, strictly speaking, a Catholic idea, but Lamb/Martyr was not a strict Catholic. He gravitated to a more recent fusion of the traditional Church with more evangelical elements. In the services of this new sect, it was not uncommon for healing to take place, for shouted testimonials and the speaking of strange tongues to be heard.

  It was the tension of the break-in and the sensory overload of the thousands and thousands of colorful balls that set him off. His understanding of molecules being extremely limited, he imagined the marbles to be genes themselves, and these tables the very places where the obscenity of cloning was being carried out.

  Well, we'd see about that.

  "Tools of evil!" he shrieked, and grabbed the Chinese compositor's board by one corner. It was heavy and well braced, but his strength was as the strength of ten because he had become the living, breathing Sword of the Lord. The board tilted and the marbles began to clatter on the floor even before Lamb swung it over to crash on the floor.

  The racket was incredible. Python had been on his way to the door connecting what he now knew to be two laboratories when the clattering, clanging, clanking wall of sound rolled over him and made a shiver race up his spine. He turned and watched, frozen, as thousands of marbles rolled noisily all around him. It was like a truckload of cymbals rolling down a slope of broken glass.

  "Guide my hand, O Lord!" Lamb cried, and then looked down at the tables. He overturned one, creating a fresh wave of sound. Lamb turned to another table and began flailing with his crowbar, smashing glass bowls with more marbles in them, sweeping everything in his reach onto the floor.

  No surprise, Python beat Turtle to the door. He flattened himself against the wall so the door would hide him when the guard swung it open... as he did, two seconds after Python got there. The guard swept his flashlight over the room and saw incredible chaos. A wild-eyed man in a baggy trench coat was swinging a crowbar over his head and smashing it down on what remained on the tables; and another fellow, old as anyone the guard had ever seen, was fleeing directly toward him... with an aluminum walker. He took a few steps into the building, not quite able to add up the different parts of the scene into anything that made sense. Behind him, Python slipped around the door and gave him a shove. The guard fell forward, dropping the flashlight. He heard the rapidly retreating footsteps of Python behind him.

  The resolve left him as quickly as it had come. Suddenly he was sure it was a bomb. The only question in his mind was, How long do I have?

  Take me in Thy arms, Sweet Jesus.

  Sweat broke out on his face. The crowbar clattered to the cement floor. As he had in so many times of stress in the past, he took refuge in his rosary beads, looking at the ceiling as he waited for the Lord to take him.

  "Move, you asshole!" Turtle shouted, looking back over his shoulder, pumping his walker forward for all he was worth. It was a bad idea in a room covered in marbles. Turtle stepped on a few and his foot flew out from under him. He bobbled, his hands slipped on the walker, and he came down hard with his left leg bent under him. His knee popped. The good news was he had long since lost most sensation from the thighs down. The bad news was, looking at the unnatural angle of his lower leg, he knew he had surely just taken his last step on Earth. Wheelchairs from now on.

  He strained to raise his head high enough to see the door where Python had fled. He saw two more uniformed men enter, these carrying shotguns.

  "Well, fuck me," he sighed, and lay down on his back.

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

  Younger Sister got very sick.

  She stopped eating, and stumbled after the herd for three days. Always, on a ridge a safe distance away, Big Mama could see the two-legs. At night they built fires, which Big Mama hated, but as long as they kept away from the herd she didn't do anything about it.

  Once another group of two-legs came wandering by and they stared at the wounded mammoth. The first group of two-legs came charging down the hill, chattering and throwing things. The two groups fought some, but mostly they screamed at each other, and after a while one group went away. Which group was the winner, the first or the second? Big Mama didn't know and didn't care. She was concerned about Younger Sister, but had no idea what to do about her. Really, there was nothing she could do. Younger Sister would get better, or she would die. That was the harsh rule of nature. The herd would live on.

  On the third day Younger Sister sat down and wouldn't get up again, though her relatives tried to help her to her feet. A few hours later she fell onto her side. She lay there in the baking noonday sun as the herd gathered around her, still trying to help her get up. But Younger Sister was too tired.

  That evening she stopped breathing.

  The herd lingered around her until the sun went down, and into the night. They caressed and smelled her with their trunks. They touched the sharp stick that was still in her side, and smelled the drying blood. They chased away the flies that had gathered around her, but the flies kept coming back.

  In the morning they moved on.

  As the herd got to the top of a hill Fuzzy stopped and looked back.

  The two-legs were coming down from the hill, waving their sharp sticks and throwing rocks and shouting and chattering, driving away the vultures and dire wolves that had already gathered around Younger Sister's body.

  They waved burning sticks at the two saber-toothed cats and poked at them with the sharp sticks, and the big cats backed away, screeching angrily.

  Then they started to work on Younger Sister.

  Fuzzy turned away and followed his mother into the next valley, where there was lots of green grass and leaves and fruit to eat.

  15

  WHEN Howard Christian arrived at the warehouse—in a red 1950 Crosley Super Sport because it had been closest to hand when the emergency call came in—there were two Santa Monica police cruisers on the scene in addition to three Rapid Response Blazers from Robinson Security. One of the Blazers had a crumpled front fender. Not far away, at the intersection nearest to the warehouse, was a van lying on its side.

  He parked next to the blue Ford he knew belonged to Matt Wright. He knew because he had bought it and presented it to Matt, one more perk of the job. He hurried over to the Robinson man with the most braid on his uniform, who was standing with a police sergeant and two men in handcuffs. Warburton and two other bodyguards, seriously outdistanced by the Crosley, parked their bulletproof SUV nearby, got out, and scanned the area nervously, fearing a trap of some sort.

  That first unit had been driven by Agent Dawson, an ex-cop who, when he witnessed a dark van leaving the scene at a high rate of acceleration, didn't hesitate to pull up behind it and nudge it on the left side just as the driver was screeching around a corner. The van had lifted up on two wheels, hung there a moment, and crashed onto its side. Dawson had removed the driver at gunpoint as the second Robinson car arrived and apprehended the other two suspects inside the building.

  "You say there were three suspects?" Howard asked, looking around.

  "Third one was injured in a fall," Kraylow said. "We've got him on the way to the hospital right now."

  He examined the remaining suspects. Suspects? Hell, no need to think like a cop. They were guilty until they proved their innocence, simple as that. The first one stood there defiantly in his manacles. He had a bloody nose and an old burn scar on one side of his face. But Python was actually feeling anything but defiant. He was thinking about his fingerprints and DNA getting into the system at
long last, and about where he might have left those samples of himself in the past.

  Calm had returned, belatedly, to the Martyr. He stood in his customary position, feet together, eyes to the heavens, but now in shackles. He was prepared to do time. He was prepared to suffer anything, and intended at all costs not to tell any of these people of the bomb inside, even if it swept him away with everyone else. Perhaps the arch blasphemer, Howard Christian, would be inside when the bomb went off.

  HOWARD entered the building and saw Matt Wright and Susan Morgan coming through the connecting door from the elephant compound. As he walked, he kicked some of the scattered marbles and they clattered across the floor. He looked around at the damage, and he knew he had screwed up. And he knew why.

  Not too long after making his first fortune, he had watched an old documentary about Michael Jackson on late-night television. At one point Jackson had gone on a shopping spree, in a shop that sold very ugly antiques. The dude had strolled along, pointing to things he wanted. When the bill was totaled, it came to six million dollars.

  Howard had bolted from the bed and thrown up before he reached the toilet.

  Why? Not long before seeing the program Howard had spent a million dollars for a car, and in fact would within a month or two spend seven million dollars on another car, and never have a nervous moment about it, much less a full-blown panic attack.

  What he could not do was pay $2.65 per gallon for gasoline when he could get it a few miles away for $2.63. He would break out in a sweat, his hands would start to tremble. He knew it was stupid, and for that reason he never fueled his own cars anymore, he never bought consumer items of any sort. He had staff that did that, and they never told him the prices. But every once in a while he made a decision on the basis of this ravenous miserliness, something he should have known to be a false economy, such as deciding to go with only one guard at night at the time machine project site, when Robinson had strongly recommended two so one could always remain in the shack just outside the door.