Mammoth

by John Varley

  He had killed her three days before and she was quite frozen, but somehow she still felt warm to his touch.

  Oh, lord, how he missed her, the woman who had redeemed him, who had made his life worth living. He was looking forward to joining her wherever she had gone, heaven or hell or sweet nothingness.

  He had the preparation of cyanide in his medicine bag. He could go quickly if he chose. His wife had certainly gone quickly enough, and though it had not been completely painless, she had thanked him as she swallowed the fatal dose.

  He would take the poison... but there was a nagging feeling of something left undone. He couldn't imagine what it might be, but he knew he wouldn't let go until it came to him.

  A dying man's life is supposed to pass before his eyes and he had been having many, many memories, but hardly any from before what they came to call Day One of Year One. It all seemed like a past life now. Cities. Helicopters. Computers, satellites, nuclear bombs, cell phones—any sort of telephone. He could easily believe he had dreamed it all.

  But not a dream, in retrospect. A nightmare. A nightmare he had once thought had begun on Day One, Year One... but now realized had ended on that horrible day.

  THERE they were, floating in Puget Sound in a magnificent eight-million-dollar yacht, and the world went away.

  Everything he valued in the world, anyway, except for Andrea. There they were, at the entrance to one of the great metropolitan estuaries on Earth, and all he could see for miles and miles was water, rocks, trees, and a sky without airplanes. Here they were, worth thirty-nine billion dollars, on paper (thirty-nine and a half billion, counting Andrea's money), and unable to buy anything. The real meaning of that phrase, "on paper," had never come home to him until that moment.

  They spent most of the first day motoring around the sound, looking for signs of human life, Howard raging, Andrea despairing. Was it 1804, were Lewis and Clark somewhere south on the Columbia? Was it 100,000 B.C.? Was it A.D. 100,000, and all the works of mankind crumbled to dust?

  But neither of them were quitters.

  They inventoried the Bertram, from the scuppers to the fo'c'sle, or whatever they called it, and found they had quite a lot of stuff. Like Howard himself, the friend he had borrowed the boat from had enjoyed gadgets, and liked to have the best. There was plenty of food. There were tools. There was fishing gear sturdy enough to land a killer whale (Howard had never even baited a hook), and rifles and shotguns and pistols and ammunition and tools. There were several computers, including one Howard had brought himself, pocket-sized and able to run on solar energy.

  They got out the manuals and learned to run the ship. They turned off the generator on the second day, to save fuel, sat quietly in the dark at night, grudging even a single candle they could never replace, talking over the possibilities. During the day they learned to fish. The waters were teeming with fish. They landed salmon the size of atomic submarines.

  And day by day a conviction grew in Howard. He could not explain it and he could not prove it, but he knew what the date was. It was shortly before that horrible, horrible man, Matt Wright, and that thieving bitch, Susan Morgan, had gone into the past with his time machine and come back with a herd of mammoths and no time machine.

  Nothing could sway him from this, and Andrea didn't even try. She herself didn't much care where she was if there was no place to shop, but if she had to be somewhere, southern California was what she knew, and though she realized that Rodeo Drive wouldn't be built for ten thousand years or so, a sea voyage would be better than sitting around here in the damp, cloudy, moldy, rainy, chilly, fungus-ridden, depressing Pacific Northwest.

  And who knew? Maybe Howard's obsession was right. Maybe she could get back to where her credit cards worked. Andrea was an environmentalist, but no outdoorswoman. The woods were full of chiggers and mosquitoes and spiders and things.

  So Howard made his calculations, found they could just get there on the three thousand gallons of fuel remaining, and they made their way down the coast on just one of the big twin diesels at the most economical rpm setting as determined by the boat's computer.

  They had good luck. When a big storm hit they were able to shelter in San Francisco Bay. How very, very odd to sail through it with no bridge overhead. There was nothing on Alcatraz Island, nothing on Yerba Buena, no '49ers boomtown. Nothing.

  Several times they saw, and were seen by, native peoples. Some were on shore, some in canoes, but none tried to catch the big Bertram. So it wasn't the age of dinosaurs... but Howard had known that, the coastline pretty much agreed with the ship's maps—though of course all the fancy GPS stuff was useless with no satellites overhead—and the continent had been very different when T. rex stalked the Earth.

  Howard had hoped to find his missing warehouse on the way, but found no sign of it. It proved nothing, though he scanned the area from the top of every rise. He hadn't realized how easy it would be to hide a single structure in wilderness like this. It could be in the next shallow ravine, or he could be miles away from it.

  Or, maybe it hadn't arrived yet.

  They found the tar pits. Again, nothing. They spent the night, sleepless from all the unfamiliar and frightening animal sounds, and hiked back to the ship the next day.

  On the shore, a hundred people awaited them.

  IT was snowing harder now. Howard kept brushing it away from his face, again wondering why he was bothering.

  He remembered something he hadn't thought of for a long time: His first sight of the "caveman" nestled up against the frozen mammoth. He remembered his disgust. Soon, probably before the day was over, something would make a meal of his face. Hell, of most of his head. Not a bear, a bear would certainly drag him away and eat a lot more. Probably not a wolf. Most likely some of the little snow foxes he had seen on his way north. They would gnaw at him a while, then the snow would cover him. He found the prospect held no emotion for him, one way or the other. Though if they came while he was still alive he'd fight them off. Howard Christian was not a quitter.

  He looked at his watch... and smiled again. At Matt's watch. Even after all these years he still did it from time to time. His people felt the watch held very powerful medicine, because the chief looked at it so often, and they had been sorry to see him leave with it, but of course too polite to say so.

  And it did have heap powerful juju, or voodoo, or power of some sort, though not of a type any of them would ever understand. Nor, he admitted to himself, did he have more than the faintest, quasispiritual sense of the watch's power. Hell, it didn't even tell time anymore, hadn't since the radio signal from the Naval Observatory had suddenly winked off on Day One, Year One. Years ago.

  Years ago.

  How many? He could probably work it out, if it mattered. He had a good memory. There was Year One. There was the Year of Building. There was the year of Many Fish. There was the Year of the First-Born Child. There was the Year of the First Mammoth Kill. There was... He had forgotten the sequence. At some point it had ceased to matter. It was probably around the Year Howard Realized Matt Was Not Coming. At some point he had moved from being a middle-aged man to being an old man, and then a very old man. Probably somewhere between seventy-five and eighty.

  A few brave souls had actually been aboard the Twist of Fate, but they hadn't ventured inside, and they had done very little damage. One had put a steel fishhook through his hand, but didn't seem angry about it. He seemed to treasure the bright, shiny new thing hanging there.

  Howard kept his finger on the trigger, and he and Andrea both smiled a lot, and nodded, and showed open palms, and got into their Zodiac and—startling everyone when they started the engine—motored back out to the Twist.

  Establishing themselves as White Gods didn't take long. They had a practically unlimited supply of miracles to offer. Soon everyone was friendly and eager to see new things. When Howard and Andrea went back to the tar pits and set up a tent, part of the tribe went with them to protect them, and the rest moved their
village three miles north to guard the Twist and to fish, which was their main livelihood.

  Howard waited.

  To pass the time, he read. His computer memories held much of the future worlds' libraries, most of it absolutely useless but some incredibly valuable to them, from the Boy Scout Handbook to paleontology and anthropology texts. Year One passed, meticulously marked off by the internal clock in Howard's computer.

  They never called the next one Year Two. When it came to an end, it was the Year of Building. Things just... happened.

  Howard wasn't capable of just sitting and waiting, and neither was Andrea. They got involved in the affairs of the tribe. He was never going to be able to give them automobiles or rifles, hell, he would never even be able to smelt iron. But he could teach them things. Andrea picked up the language like a sponge, and he learned it almost in spite of himself.

  And he began to change things. At first, it was for his own comfort. The food in the Twist ran out, and he was sick to death of fish. Howard longed for beef. The People trapped and hunted small game and picked wild fruit and vegetables. They lived in huts made of sticks and the bones of mammoths that had died a natural death. Southern California was a lot cooler now than it would be in Howard's time; the wind blew right through the flimsy things, and his tent had big rips in it and was miserable in the rain.

  He taught them to build better shelter.

  Andrea had a baby, and they named him Adam. Howard found out how elephants had been hunted and killed before gunpowder, and taught them to do that.

  HOWARD couldn't even remember what the year was when he finally abandoned his vigil at the tar pits. There was too much else going on in his life by then. He was a part of the community, the leader, the shaman, the medicine man.

  Andrea had a third baby and this one lived, and a fourth, and she lived, too. Dear Howie, beloved Daphne.

  The People became the most powerful tribe on the coast for as far as a man could walk in many days. They were the ones who slew the mammoths, who had the white gods, and the sticks that killed at a distance. (Well, they used to. The ammo was gone now.) Howard knew the names of every person living within miles of him, all part of his tribe, his people, his family.

  Then came the year that he realized... he was happy. He was happier than he had ever been in his life.

  That's it! I remember now....

  WHEN their first grandchild was born, Howard began to feel a restlessness.

  He had thought much about time travel. He had improved the lives of the People, gave them new technology. They still lived in the Stone Age, but it was a cleaner, healthier, more prosperous Stone Age. They used to fight with other tribes, but Howard had put an end to that, first with the guns, later with improved weaponry. He gave them the bow and arrow. But there was a big conundrum. Was he changing the future? Or was what had happened fated to happen?

  It occurred to him that he, Howard Christian, may have been the reason mammoths became extinct in North America. The thought did not please him... and he eventually dismissed it. Someone else would have doped it out soon enough. Some genius in Europe or Asia had learned to do it without his help.

  He had taught the People primitive agriculture because he never grew to like one of their dietary staples, ground acorns. They had found desiccated tomatoes and potatoes in the larder and nurtured them, and Howard once more enjoyed fries and ketchup. Where had they gone? No book in his library mentioned a native California species of tomato. Lost knowledge, or was he changing the future? He had thought of doing more. He knew where to find copper ore. Why not make metals?

  But... why? He had revolutionized his old world, and it brought him very little real satisfaction. He spent his billions on toys, or on dominating others, or in meaningless games with money. The People didn't even have money, didn't need it. He had revolutionized their lives, too... and his satisfaction was enormous. He had real respect among the people, instead of ass-kissing, fear, or envy. Sure, being a white god didn't hurt when it came to gaining respect, but as the years went by, as his family became their family, he one day came to the realization that he had one thing he had never had before in his entire life. He had friends.

  Would he jeopardize that by inventing copper or bronze tools? What if he changed history and it turned out that he never came back here, never had his children, his family, his People? It was a thought too awful to contemplate.

  And he didn't think it would work that way, that it could not work that way. Andrea had learned medicine, surgery, had saved the life of many a child who would have died without her help. The first time she did it he worried, they discussed it... and decided that anyone who could stand by and watch a child die simply because saving his life might alter the future, or destroy the universe... was not somebody either of them wanted to know.

  The conviction grew in him that it would all work itself out in the way it had to be. The tomato and potato plants would die out. His technological innovation would either be forgotten, or the People would be conquered by a more aggressive tribe and some of their skills lost. The mammoths would still go extinct, and he didn't need to concern himself about whether it was his fault; the future would be as he remembered it.

  But if that was so, he had some obligations.

  AS the snow continued to fall, Howard dug the time machine out from where he had wedged it near his legs. How many hours had he wasted staring at the thing, trying to make it work? It was one of his few regrets, that wasted time. He rubbed his thumb over the hole he had patched with tar, the hole punched when Fuzzy had almost killed him. Then he fumbled a flint arrowhead from a pocket with a hand grown numb from the cold. His left hand, because his right was trapped beneath his beloved Andrea. He smiled again. Of course, being right-handed there was no possibility in the world that, one day, he would recognize his own handwriting. He began to scratch a message on the bottom of the battered aluminum case.

  HE started his mission by domesticating mammoths.

  He had a head start by his spying on Susan, preparing for his great coup of finally displacing Susan in Fuzzy's affections. He learned how they did it in Sri Lanka and Burma. He got the People to build the necessary surrounds and pens, to hobble the mammoths and break them to the ankus. He and his family and friends learned to ride them. And they set off across the southwest: his family, some of the best and brightest among the People, and six docile mammoths.

  Oh, my, the saga he could have written about that mighty journey. Across country that would one day be home to Apache, Navajo, Zuni, Anasazi, much more hospitable now than it would be then but still harsh, still daunting. The tribes they met stood in awe of the People Who Rode Mammoths. There was never any question of fighting.

  He had noticed that here on the plains there was the occasional hybrid mammoth, part woolly and part Columbian. He assumed they were mules. He captured and domesticated an old one and called him Fuzzy-Tu. Then he sat back and waited, knowing he would understand when the proper time came.

  It was a long time. He had many grandchildren when Andrea came to him and said she was certain she had cancer. She had drugs that could help with the pain, but nothing that would cure it. He asked her if she wished she could be back in the twenty-first century, where therapy might cure her. She said the thought never entered her mind.

  They were somewhere in the Dakotas at the time, he thought. They said their farewells to their family and to the tribe, and set off northward on the back of Fuzzy-Tu.

  Winter closed in. Andrea got weaker. At last she asked him to give her the final gift, and he held her as she died. He continued north until Fuzzy-Tu was near collapse, then he sorrowfully killed the great beast.

  He sat down to wait.

  HE didn't try to remember the words. He let his awkward left hand do the writing, etching each line over and over until it was clear:

  HAD A GOOD LIFE

  NO REGRE

  He stopped. He remembered it clearly now. He and Matt had assumed the time traveler h
ad died before he could complete his message, unable to finish the vertical line of the T. But Howard was alive still, and though very weak, he knew he could go on. He could finish the message this way:

  NO HARD FEELINGS MATT

  How would Matthew Wright read that? Maybe, "No hard feelings, Matt." Maybe "No hard feelings, signed, Matt." Either way, it would surely change his reaction, and thus change history.

  For a fractional moment, the old Howard Christian seized his hand. Write it, the old Howard said. Get the bastard. Just finish the T and add the S. NO REGRETS.

  But he knew to the depths of his soul that if he tried to write one more stroke... a polar bear would bite his head off. A meteorite would come crashing from the heavens and kill him instantly. An earthquake would open a crack in the soil and swallow him up.

  He had been thrown involuntarily onto this infernal, inevitable roller coaster, and it had turned into a merry-go-round. He had enjoyed the ride.

  HAD A GOOD LIFE.

  With the last of his strength, he hurled the flint away into the snow.

  He closed his eyes.

  Soon, a pair of white foxes approached the mound in the snow and started digging.

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

  Well, maybe you can imagine the fuss when they opened the back of the trailer and found Fuzzy inside! And nobody even knew he was missing!

  What happened next was confusing, and messy, and not very much fun. Matt and Susan were put in jail for a little while, but were quickly bailed out.

  At the same time, Howard Christian, the mean rich man, and Andrea de la Terre, the glamorous movie star, vanished in a big boat that must have sunk somewhere, but nobody ever found it.

  And then the lawyers went to work. When a lot of lawyers who are making a lot of money start to fight over something in court... oh, my! Things can take just forever to get worked out. Howard being missing didn't make any difference to the rest of the people who owned the circus where Fuzzy had been kept prisoner for so long. Oh, no! They fought and fought and fought to get Fuzzy sent back to the United States.