Mammoth Dawn (12 page)

Hungry, cold, scared, and bedraggled, Cassie is reunited with Alex. He embraces her—then backs away in embarrassment. She grabs him and delivers a powerful kiss. Overjoyed, he feels as if he could take on anything now.

Zach sees this sudden shift between them and can barely control his frustration. Super-rich Alex has won
again …

O O O

After the debacle of the hunt, Gregor takes his nervous henchman Yuri aside, choosing an appropriate punishment. Yuri made the inexcusable mistake of letting the hunted animal get inside, endangering Raisa, killing Psyk’s son. He leads Yuri into a room facing two doors. “Have you ever heard the story about the Lady or the Tiger?” Behind one door is another terrible sabretooth and certain death, behind the other door is just a man. Yuri must choose.

He is about to open one of the doors when behind it he hears a quiet rustle, a growl, and he immediately chooses the other door, sure he has avoided the tiger. He pulls open the door to find a grim and bloodthirsty Psyk holding a .45. Psyk brings up the pistol in a fast, smooth motion and shoots Yuri in the head. As the man falls to the floor, Psyk keeps firing until he has emptied the clip, but still his anger isn’t satisfied. Gregor is safely out of range of the flying blood. “We may as well feed his body to the sabretooth anyway.”

O O O

That night Alex and Cassie finally make love. They hold each other, at last brought together by the ominous events and the ordeal they have just been through. Finally released, they are desperate to find comfort in each other. Part of Alex is still deeply saddened by the tragedy of his murdered wife, and always will be, but he cannot deny his feelings for Cassie.

Alex created the whole Resurrection Preserve, and the genetic Library of Earth, to honor Helen’s dreams, and Cassie has devoted her life to those mammoths and to saving endangered species. Together, they worked so hard to recreate a snapshot of the Pleistocene Era, and they are on the verge of succeeding—except for the intervention of short-sighted modern humans. Now, through politics instead of overhunting, the humans want to make these precious creatures extinct all over again.

Cassie sleeps softly beside him, but Alex stays awake long into the night.…

O O O

The exhibition mini-mammoths in Tokyo grow visibly sick. Dying, they are taken from public view. But Evo protesters are concerned about the possible spread of a prehistoric retrovirus. A riot breaks out in the Japan facility, and the dwarf mammoths are all killed by a mob. The Japanese chief researcher, who was once Alex’s rival, is helpless to stop it.

O O O

Senator Chesney’s team arrives in Alaska. She expertly milks the media, promising that her team will leave no stone unturned.

Gregor welcomes them, a fine diplomat and host, and escorts them out to his own facility near the Resurrection Preserve. He drops subtle hints that, while he himself is a businessman helping the economy of Alaska and trying to strengthen ties with neighboring Siberia, Alex Pierce is an obsessive loose-cannon, intent on research for its own sake without grasping the consequences.

Playing the good host in his big house, Gregor serves Sylvia, grumpy Senator Fitch, the Surgeon General, and their aides a banquet of roast passenger pigeon—a meal no human has eaten for a century or more. When someone asks why he would kill the once-extinct birds he fought so hard to bring back, he explains that the Preserve is still a testing ground, that the ecosystems are in flux, and that he has no choice but to keep the bird population in check. And if any irregularities are found, any shred of evidence of genuine prehistoric plagues, then he will insist the whole place be quarantined and all future work stopped.

Gregor believes he is orchestrating events. The reader suspects, though, that Sylvia is adroitly using him instead, relying on Gregor’s genuine affection for her. She lets Senator Fitch take the extreme Evo position, positioning herself as the moderate. We see her setting Gregor up for a fall.

Ominously, someone sneezes—Pleistocene hay fever again—and the investigation team looks as if they’ve already made up their minds.

O O O

The Senate investigation team flies to the Resurrection Preserve, where they are met by a cooperative Alex. They head out into the field, guided by Alex and Cassie, with Zach riding along for security.

Kinsman and his Evos (by now recovered from the miserable Montezuma Junior infection) are sure that it is time to take overt action to crush the Preserve. He has secret orders, and now the Evos will take matters into their own hands.

Kinsman stalks the mammoths near where the team is going to visit. He has a long rifle and darts filled with enough stimulant to madden an entire herd of cattle … or one woolly mammoth. As the Senate team approaches the herd, Kinsman shoots the nearest big bull, jolting it with enough chemicals to enrage it. Then he slips back into the forest, his work completed.

Cassie leads the Senate team in closer to the mammoths, hoping the politicians will see the wonder that she does. It is the Resurrection Preserve’s only chance. She has walked among the russet mammoths many times. The investigators are filled with wonder to see the majestic creatures first hand. Alex beams with pride, thinking that everything might turn out all right after all.

Suddenly, one of the largest bulls becomes a rogue and goes on a rampage. Cassie wants to intervene, but Alex sees how wild the mammoth is and he drags her away. Gregor Galaev grabs Sylvia, then takes care of himself.

The crazed mammoth kills Senator Fitch in a gruesome manner, goring him with a long tusk and then stomping him to paste. Finally, Zach and Psyk bring down the rogue mammoth with a heavy volley of well-placed shots.

[Here we throw the reader a curve. Until now, Fitch has been the political figure who always sides with the Evo position. The reader doesn’t like him, and thus he also acts as a red herring: the reader will assume that Kinsman’s secret and powerful benefactor is Fitch. His death apparently clears the field of support for Kinsman, distracting the reader from who is truly behind Kinsman.]

In stunned horror, the survivors flee back toward the protection of the main Preserve buildings. All of this occurs as live media feeds transmit images to a worldwide audience.

O O O

Alex is completely disgraced—it’s his Preserve, even if the visit wasn’t his idea. The stunned Senator Chesney immediately calls in her standby National Guard troops to oversee the shutdown of the Resurrection Preserve. Alex is arrested for gross negligence, reckless endangerment, and a host of other charges. He is taken away to prison under armed military escort. Randall LeVay, is already working on appeals and injunctions, but Alex doesn’t think they’ll have enough time for the legal system to grind through their options.

Cassie is in despair, but not surprised when Alex receives a Federal order from the Surgeon General, backed up by a Presidential condemnation: “All Helyx workers and Preserve employees are to be removed from the ranch and quarantined, until such time as medical tests have verified that they are no risk for spreading the prehistoric retrovirus.”

This is the Resurrection Preserve’s darkest hour.

Part IV—Pleistocene Rules

Inside the armed camp of the Resurrection Preserve, Gregor Galaev comes to Senator Chesney with an idea that he believes will be most satisfying. He knows that she intends to impound many of Alex’s assets, a scheme they cooked up together, and Gregor will get the rest of the Resurrection Preserve. They have both seized the opportunity that the mammoth attack has offered.

Now Gregor sees a tremendous opportunity. The sabretooth hunt was the merest prelude—he wants to hold a high-priced and secret event for his most special customers: the first
mammoth hunt
in recorded history. His chosen big-game hunters can have the thrill of their lives.

Ambitious, knowing that this plot could not have been pulled off without Gregor’s behind-the-scenes cooperation, Sylvia agrees. If the mammoths—in fact, all of the formerly extinct animals—should happen to be designated “a menace to the human race,” perhaps they could sell extremely expensive hunting permits for bounty hunters to go into the Preserve. Gregor secretly has his own embryo samples in Siberia and is willing to continue the operation there.

Zach is uneasy to be caught in the middle of the debacle. He was in charge of security here, but now he has no role at all. Gregor says, “We will have a new job for you in the next couple of days, Mr. Browder. As a hunting guide.”

With a sparkle in his eye, Gregor then sets his most interesting condition. This mammoth hunt will be conducted just as it was by our ancestors—without modern equipment, or high-tech tracking devices, or powerful automatic weapons. All hunters must agree to abide by
Pleistocene Rules
: spears and wits, man against mammoth.

Senator Chesney is surprised, but the wheels are turning in her mind. She agrees to let him plan the hunt, though she wonders who would want to do such a thing. Gregor just smiles at her. He doesn’t doubt for a second that he will have more takers than he can handle.

O O O

Randall LeVay is trying to get Alex released on bail (he’s got billions), to appeal the charges, to do anything to postpone the drastic government action.

Finally, since Alex is not deemed much of a flight risk, the judge sets bail of a million dollars, which should be easily met by the wealthy corporate president. Alex tells LeVay to pay the amount right away—then the lawyer is astonished to find that all of Helyx Corp’s assets have been frozen, thanks to trumped-up RICO charges that Senator Chesney has filed. Alex doesn’t have access to a penny of his fortune. He’s still stuck in jail.

O O O

In the deserted main house of the Resurrection Preserve, sleeping in the private quarters where she made love with Alex, a distraught Cassie discovers a secret storage area containing more frozen genetic samples. The vials are labeled “HELEN.” An icy shock runs up her spine. Has he been intending to clone his wife once the technology was developed? Or was this just a thread of hope he clung to in his despair? She holds the samples, her heart torn.

Then Kinsman and his Evos break into the main lab and systematically destroy the precious genetic samples carefully preserved as the Library of Earth. It reminds her all too much of the raid on the Montana ranch, the night Helen was killed. She frantically tries to stop them, but the Evos have done their damage and disappear into the night. The main house is in flames.

Racing into the Preserve’s control room, Cassie shuts down all of the sonic perimeter fences, secretly deactivating the electronic barricades that surround the Preserve. She hopes that some of the once-extinct animals will escape to the far north. Maybe even to Siberia, over pack ice.

O O O

Gregor and his picked hunters (Uruk Bey, Hector Chu, etc.) go out in a grand expedition. Psyk also accompanies them, still distraught from the death of his son. The party sets up camp, ready for the adventure of their lives. These are tough customers, poachers and powerful men who have no respect for laws. Sylvia Chesney is part of the group, though it is doubtful she will do any hunting herself—she wants to be beside Gregor (and to look for her opportunity). Zach Browder will ride ahead as a scout for the party, tracking down the mammoths.

Though the hunt will ostensibly follow “Pleistocene Rules,” using only primitive weapons, the hunters have brought along enough surreptitious firepower to take out an army. The skies and grounds are mercifully free of media snoops. Gregor knows this will be the greatest hunt he has ever experienced. His private footage alone, shot by microcams, will be worth a fortune in the media.

O O O

Surprisingly, Alex’s million-dollar bail is paid. Nobody expected this, and even the judge is astonished. LeVay is amazed, but quickly leads his boss out of jail. They learn that the money has been offered by the head of the Japanese group, Alex’s former rival. The message says only, “You fight for all of us.”

LeVay warns Alex about the strict conditions of the bail. “You are not allowed to leave Alaska, or even the vicinity.” Alex gives his lawyer a grim smile. “Going away from the Preserve is the opposite of what I intend to do.”

O O O

On his snow-skimmer, Zach scouts ahead of Gregor’s hunting group. He is still aching from Cassie’s rejection. She knows about the hunt Gregor has proposed and hates Zach for taking part in it so easily. He heads north in search of the main mammoth herd, though the surreptitious hunters already have a good idea of the location, thanks to the Preserve’s security monitors. The hunting party will follow in jeeps until they locate the herd, then they will set up camp, using thermal tents and fancy wilderness gear.

O O O

Gregor and Psyk watch the big-game hunters at their campsite in the mid-afternoon. Uruk Bey and Hector Chu ineffectually throw spears made from saplings fitted with stone points—they can’t seem to hit the broad side of a mammoth. When Psyk throws his spears, he hits the target every time.

As night falls, the wind picks up and the weather turns very cold. Senator Chesney gets a satellite update and learns about a big blizzard coming in from the Pacific, which will dump a lot of snow over the Preserve.

Gregor tries to reassure her. “In the last Ice Age, survival depended on hunting mammoths. Men had to go out, risk their lives, never mind the weather—or the tribe did not eat. Are we less than they were? Tomorrow humans will hunt mammoths again for the first time in 10,000 years.”

Sylvia, though, seems concerned about something more than just weather.

O O O

Free on bail, Alex slips back inside his Preserve. He uses his knowledge of the place and also how to thwart his own defensive systems. Although he allowed Zach to control the surveillance and security, Alex is sufficiently embittered by the Montana assault that he doesn’t quite trust anybody.

Inside, he meets up with Cassie and is appalled to see the destroyed main house, the wrecked Library of Earth … and, worse, the illicit mammoth hunt.