The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 24

by Gardner Dozois

  “Once he was bandaged, Sergei said, ‘This is the end. We’re going to China. Do you have our notes?’

  “Rosa hurried back to the mammoth shack and found them, fallen among huge bones and shreds of hairy skin. Oddly enough, they smelled of smoke, though there hadn’t been a fire in the shack. She carried the papers back to the cabin. She and Sergei packed what remained of their belongings, put on their skis and set out for the nearest town.

  “Their journey to Beijing was long and arduous. In spite of many difficulties they made it safely. In Beijing they parted, Rosa going home to America, while Sergei remained to study Chinese fossils. It was he, along with Teilard de Chardin, who discovered the remains of Peking Man and he who carried those remarkable relicts to safety when the Japanese invaded China.

  “Rosa never saw him again, though she carried a memento back with her. Do you know what it was, Emma?”

  “No.”

  “Think!”

  I frowned and tried of think of something Russian. “A samovar?”

  Grandmother laughed. “It was a baby. By the time Rosa returned to America, she knew she was pregnant, though it didn’t show when she reported to Hill. A good thing, since he was a fierce moralist.

  “Do you know who the baby was, Emma?”

  I could see the question was serious and thought hard. “Your mother?”

  “Yes. The father was Sergei. You get your green eyes from him and the way they slant over your cheekbones. If you are lucky, you will inherit some of his intelligence and commitment to work.”

  “Oh.” Grandmother had only two grandfathers, which made her unusual. Most people I knew had three or four. One had come from the Rosebud Reservation. I’d seen several pictures of him: a tall young man, his black hair cut short, looking stiff and awkward in his white clothing. In some of the pictures, he was next to his parents, who dressed in the old Indian way, blankets around their bent shoulders. In other pictures he was with his pretty young wife, who was mixed race and had light-colored eyes, striking even in an old photograph. They had two children who lived, Grandmother told me.

  I had seen a single picture of my grandmother’s other grandfather: an old man with white hair and a trim, white beard.

  “He’s old in the photo,” I said.

  “Sergei? Yes. It was taken years later, when he won the Nobel Prize for Medicine. Rosa clipped it out of a magazine.”

  “He never even wrote?” I asked.

  Grandmother paused a long while. “I never knew for certain,” she said at last. “Rosa kept her own counsel.

  “Once she was back in Montana, Rosa reported to Louis W. Hill. By this time, he was seriously worried. A disease had killed all the mammoths in the Ringling Brothers Circus. Neither the circus veterinary staff not the scientists brought in had been able to identify the disease, though it was suspected that it came from the circus elephants; several Indian elephants became ill at the same time, and one died. Now we know it was a herpes virus, which infects African elephants. It’s harmless to them, but can cause a serious illness in Indian elephants. We have a vaccine now; before that was developed, the disease was 100% fatal to mammoths.

  “Thus far, Hill told my grandmother, this was an isolated incident. Nonetheless, he had taken precautions. Circus trains were not allowed to use the section of Northern Pacific’s high line which went through Glacier. The park lodges had been instructed to hire no one who admitted to a circus past; and law officers in nearby towns were asked to report any carnivals to the park administrations. This was not enough to keep Hill happy. He dug into his pocket and personally paid for an elite group of specially trained mammoth wranglers, who watched the animals and made sure that tourists saw them from a distance. Of course, there were stories about the wranglers in newspapers and magazines; Hill had a genius for marketing. There was even a movie that starred Tom Mix as an outlaw trying to make an honest life as a wrangler. Sagebrush and Mammoths. I think that’s the right name.

  “Still, Hill remained concerned. What if some miserable little carnival managed to elude his precautions and get close to the park? An infected elephant might get loose and wander into the park, or a roaming mammoth might find the circus. What if an infected tourist managed to get close to a mammoth? He could hardly prevent tourists from coming to Glacier; and there was no way to check their backgrounds. The disease might be like rabies, which can infect many kinds of mammals. It might leap from elephants to elk or prairie dogs. Who could say?

  “My grandmother thought Hill was worrying too much. More serious, it seemed to her, was the herd’s reproductive rate and the danger of inbreeding. Like elephants, mammoths had long gestation periods. They produced single children, and the children had long childhoods. This meant that the Glacier herd was increasing very slowly; and fear of infection meant that they could not introduce genetic variety by bringing in new animals. But she said nothing about this. Instead, she listened – silent and impassive – while Hill paced up and down his private railway car, explaining his concerns. Electric lanterns shone on polished mahogany, dark velvet, oriental carpets and gilded picture frames. The art within the frames was minor. Unlike J. P. Morgan, Hill was not a connoisseur.

  “He was stern-looking man, with a trim, white beard. My grandmother said the picture of Sergei when he received the Nobel Prize reminded her of Hill a little. He wore a buttoned vest, even in Glacier; though here in the west he wore jodhpurs and high boots, instead of suit pants and shoes. A battered western hat lay on a chair, along with a drover’s coat. His glasses were gold-rimmed pince-nez.

  “He stopped finally and asked her to report on her trip. She did, though much was left out.

  “ ‘What conclusions have you come to?’ he asked. ‘Have you learned anything useful, or have I wasted my money?’

  “Rose had spent her journey home thinking. ‘I believe the secret of saving the mammoths is refrigeration.’

  “Hill frowned. ‘Explain yourself, Miss Stevens!’

  “Rosa took a deep breath and continued. ‘With luck, you may be able to maintain the herd in Glacier. But it is small; the total population of mammoths alive on Earth is small; and we now know that a disease fatal to the mammoths exists. We need a second plan, a position to which we can fall back, if the worst happens.’

  “ ‘Yes?’

  “ ‘I would like you to consider two things, sir. First is the remarkable history of the previous century. Consider how much was discovered, how many advances in human knowledge were made! Pasteur and Edison are only two of the geniuses who have transformed the world as we know it. Surely this present century will provide us with comparable discoveries and advances.’

  “Hill nodded abruptly. ‘Go on.’

  “ ‘Second, consider how well preserved the Siberian mammoths are – and for how long – in spite of imperfect conditions. It is my belief that freezing and thawing have damaged the Siberian tissue beyond hope of repair. But it ought to be possible to find a more efficient method of freezing flesh than that provided by a glacier! If we could find a way to freeze tissue samples without damaging the delicate machinery of the cells; and if we could then maintain the tissue samples at a constant temperature, without the freezing and thawing which has done so much harm to the Siberian tissue, then someday – not now, but later in this wonderful new century – it may become possible to start the cellular machinery in motion and reanimate the frozen flesh.’

  “ ‘Balderdash!’ said Hill. He paced the length of the railway car, picked up a riding crop and paced back to her, hitting the crop against his boot. Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! ‘I hired you to give me solid science, not ideas out of scientific romances! This plan belongs in the mind of Mr. H. G. Wells, not in the mind of a scientist or in the mind of practical businessman.’

  “ ‘Well, then,’ said Rosa. ‘Consider how useful a really good refrigerated rail car would be for your business. If you could bring the fruits of the west – unspoiled! In perfection condition! – to Chicago and the eastern m
arkets —’

  “Hill paused and laid the riding crop down on a mahogany table. Then he paced up and down the car several more times. Finally he stopped in front of a bell jar which contained a pair of beaded moccasins. He tapped the jar top gently. ‘In spite of all my efforts, in my heart of hearts I believe my Blackfoot are doomed. Progress can’t be stopped. Those in its way will be tossed aside, like a bison standing on a rail line when the express comes through. The future belongs to Anglo-American civilization. The Blackfoot, the bison, my mammoths all belong to an age which is ending or has already ended. But you are right about the usefulness of a really good refrigerated rail car; and modern science ought to be able to find something better than a car full of hay and blocks of ice. I will take your advice and invest in refrigeration; and you – Miss Stevens – can continue to your work on mammoth tissue. I will do what I can for the mammoths.’

  “Rosa found herself grinning. ‘Yes, sir!’

  “Why did he love the mammoths so strongly?” my grandmother asked. “I have never been able to decide. Was it their rugged power and persistence? Or the sense that they were survivors from a past age, as he was, the 20th century son of a fierce 19th century father? Whatever his reason, Hill established a research foundation devoted to the study of refrigeration. You must have seen it. It’s in St. Paul. A fine example of Art Deco architecture. The tile facade with trumpeting mammoths is especially distinguished.

  “While the building was being planned, Rosa went to visit her relatives on the Standing Rock Reservation. My mother was born there. When Rosa returned to work, she left Clara with her Lakota relatives. This was hard to do, but she knew that Hill would not approve of an illegitimate child or a scientist who was also a mother. She refused to give up her research. The mammoths had spoken to her. She would not ignore their advice.

  “She wasn’t a religious person. The faith she learned as a child faded over time; and she never found another one. But she took her dreams seriously, though she wasn’t sure where they came from. Maybe from her unconscious, as Freud and his followers argued; or maybe from a collective unconscious, as other psychologists had argued. In any case, Rosa knew, dreams could provide insight into scientific problems. The structure of benzene came to its discoverer – drat it! I have forgotten the man’s name! – in a dream.”

  Grandmother got up and went to the bathroom again, then refilled our glasses with iced tea. The light coming through the lace curtains came at a lower angle now and had the rich gold of late afternoon. I was getting tired. But I had been raised to listen when elders talked. There were things to be learned here in Fort Yates which I could never learn in my experimental school.

  Grandmother settled back in her rocker. “Rosa settled in St. Paul and began work at the Hill Institute. She was Indian and looked it; and she was female. Obviously there were problems at the Institute and in the city. Dislike of Indians goes deep in this part of the country; and at that time there were plenty of people in Minnesota who remembered the Great Sioux Uprising of 1862. Twenty-nine of our Dakota kinsmen were hanged for their part in the uprising, though not all of those who were hanged had taken part. Be that as it may, it was the largest mass execution in the history of the United States.

  “Rosa encountered prejudice and difficulty; but the good opinion of Louis W. Hill went a long way in St. Paul in the 1920s. With him standing behind her, she met and overcame every adversity.

  “She never married, possibly because she was Indian. White men were reluctant to marry an Indian woman; and there were not many Indian men with her education. Her child remained on Standing Rock. She visited Clara – your great-grandmother – as often as possible, but they were never close. The girl regarded one of Rosa’s cousins as her true mother, her mother of the heart. This saddened Rosa, as she told me in her extreme old age. Do you want more iced tea?”

  I said no.

  “In 1929, the stock market collapsed – as you ought to know, Emma. You’ve studied some history.”

  “I do know.”

  “What did you learn?”

  “Never buy on margin.”

  “That’s true enough,” said Grandmother and nodded her head. “But there’s more to be learned from 1929, as you find out when you’re older. At time the market fell, Louis W. Hill was heavily invested. He was trying to buy control of several west coast rail lines, so he could extend his father’s empire into California. By now he had the best refrigerated rail cars in the world; and he wanted to fill them with California produce.

  “He was lucky. He didn’t go broke when the market crashed. But he had a hard time until the Second World War began. His attention turned from Glacier and the Hill Institute to saving the Great Northern Railroad. The Institute’s funds were sharply reduced. Research came to a halt. Rosa ended as a maintenance person, who made sure doors were locked and lights off and the freezers containing the mammoth tissue on. There was still enough money to pay the power bill. Louis W. Hill did not forget the Institute entirely.

  “I asked Rosa once if she had felt despair in that period. She said, ‘I had a job, which was more than millions had, and I was able to keep an eye on my tissue samples.’ She was a stoic woman, who kept much to herself, maybe because she lived between two worlds. Who could she confide in, being Indian by descent and white by culture?”

  I sort of understood this, since my dad was mixed race. But things had been worse back in the 20th century. I knew that.

  “In 1938, in the depths of Great Depression, the herd in Glacier became infected with the same disease which had killed the Ringling and Lincoln Park mammoths. To this day, no one knows how the virus got to Glacier. Millions of people were on the move, looking for work. Many rode the rails; and some camped in Glacier. The rangers drove them out. But the park was large and the times troubled. It was not possible to keep all the hobos out. Obviously, none of these people were traveling with an elephant; and as far as Rosa was able to find out, none of them came into contact with the Glacier mammoths.

  “Many years later I became interested in the question at a time when I was between research projects. I did a search on hobos and mammoths, using one of the CDC epidemiology programs. Rosa had no such resource, of course. The program did not find an epidemiological connection between hobos and mammoths, but I did find this.” Grandmother got up stiffly and went to her computer. It was on a wood side table, its monitor like a glass flower on a curving blue stalk. The keyboard lay to one side, where Grandmother had pushed it while working directly on the screen. As she approached the screen lit up. She touched it lightly with a bony finger.

  “You ought to be interested, Emma, since your father plays the blues. This is a WPA recording made in Kansas City in 1936. It’s the only recording Frypan Charlie Harrison ever made, and the only time this song was ever recorded.” She touched the computer two more times. A guitar began to play old-fashioned country blues, the real thing, but on a really bad instrument. I could tell from the sound. My Dad wouldn’t have touched a guitar that sounded like that. Grandmother sat down.

  A man’s voice – thin and cracked and distant – began to sing:

  “Hard times is here, hardest I ever did see.

  Hard times is here, hardest I ever did see.

  Feels like a big bull mammoth stepped on me.

  “Been riding the rails, looking to earn some pay.

  I been riding the rails, looking to earn some pay.

  That big bull mammoth keeps getting in my way.

  “Blackbird flying and shining in the sun.

  Blackbird flying and shining in the sun.

  Won’t get no rest till my last day is done.”

  There was more guitar playing, then the recording ended. The computer monitor went dark.

  “The recording could have been made to sound like a modern recording,” Grandmother said. “For that matter, the technology we have now could make Frypan Charlie sound like a far better blues singer than he was, someone out of the past like Robert Johnson
or a present day singer like Delhi John Patel. But this is from the Smithsonian Collection. It sounds the way it would have, if you’d played the original recording right after it was made in 1936. The notes say ‘big bull mammoth’ is probably a reference to the private police employed by railroads in the 19th and 20th centuries. Though it may also refer to the economic system that was treating Charlie so badly. In any case, the song isn’t about Rosa’s animals. But I like it. It’s the single thing we know about Charlie. He shows up in no other recording.”

  She was silent for a while, her bony hands folded in her lap and her bright blue eyes gazing right through the living room wall, it seemed to me, into the West River distance. There was no one in my life like her then, and I have never found a replacement for her.

  “I especially like the stanza about the blackbird. It reminds me of red-winged blackbirds in the spring. They show up before the marshes turn green, and each male grabs hold of the tallest dry stalk he can find and hangs there, as visible as he can make himself. ‘I’m here,’ he sings. ‘This is me. This is my individual song.’

  “That was Charlie’s individual song. He’s lucky – and we’re lucky – that someone recorded it.

  “For the next three years, Rosa struggled to save the mammoths. It was to no avail. In 1941, the last Glacier mammoth – a young, pregnant female named Minerva – passed on, with Rosa in attendance. A few animals still remained in zoos around the world, but not enough to form a breeding population. The species was doomed.

  “She had wired Hill when the mammoth began to fail. He arrived a day after Minerva’s death. Rosa had already removed the fetus and put it into a refrigerator car to be shipped back to St. Paul. She was doing an autopsy of the mother when Hill walked in, dressed in an eastern suit with an eastern hat in his hand.