Mammoth Dawn Read Online Free PDF Page A

adjacent valleys. The politics of doing that would be far worse than the economics; the perpetual gang of Evo demonstrators at the South Gate would grow, joined by garden-variety environmentalists. Folks around here didn’t look much to the future—or to the distant past, either, it seemed—and they didn’t like change.…
    With the approach of the horses, the mammoths snorted and stirred. Bullwinkle, the big leader of the herd, hung his shaggy head and lowered long tusks as he gazed at the others. The mixed-bag of hairy elephants had a range of body types, each generation only a few years separated from the previous, and each one significantly woollier than either of the two hybrid mammophants Alex had allowed Geoffrey Kinsman to see.
    Cassie halted her mare beside a tree completely stripped of leaves and half of its bark. “Best to tie up our horses here.” She dismounted with the springy grace of a gymnast. “I prefer to walk among them.”
    “Aren’t you afraid of getting stepped on?” Helen asked.
    The ranch hand flipped her braid back between her shoulder blades and adjusted her hat. “No, ma’am. But I’m afraid for the horses.”
    The few stands of valley grass darkened to jade as the sun settled on the distant blue mountains. A nighthawk flitted with thin cries above the willows of a narrow creek that meandered through the meadow. Alex’s eyes followed the hawk up toward the peaks that towered against a hard cobalt sky already dotted with the fires of far suns. The light would fade fast, dark scarcely an hour away.
    A perfect night to camp.
    Cassie started ahead, glancing over her shoulder and resisting the impulse to leave the other two behind. Alex remembered when he had been that impatient, and that young—not so long ago. Though this entire project had sprung from his wife’s dream decades ago, Cassie Worth was the unrelenting factotum who supercharged the Helyx staff and never seemed to sleep. She ran down innumerable practical details about exotic animal husbandry, and she figured out the answers for herself when no alleged “expert” had a clue.
    Alex reflected as he watched the young woman move swiftly through the herd. To think that she had just applied to Helyx out of the blue. No advanced degrees, just solid experience at UC Davis, a farm upbringing, and an ache to bring back to the world something long gone. Alex had noted more common sense in Cassie than in half of his own VPs and Division Heads. And she had a real rapport with the animals.
    “Come on you guys, I want to show them off, but I’ll need to get us back up on the slope where I can set up camp for the night … or did you change your minds again?” She turned her clear blue eyes to Alex—did he see a girlish crush there? He was abashedly reminded that he had canceled their plans three previous times for the usual “business reasons.”
    “Nothing’s more important tonight.” Alex reached over to stroke Helen’s shoulder. “My wife and I are going to sleep out under the stars.”
    “Where I can hear my mammoths snore,” Helen added.
    They moved among the gigantic but gentle animals; it seemed to Alex as if he had wandered into a truck stop filled with living, hairy semis. The heavy air was laden with smells like hot oiled leather, old upholstery, musk and fur—stronger than the closeness of bison or penned cattle. But it was a wild musk, from thick and wiry hair grown to protect the beasts from the cold of an Ice Age.
    Alex felt giddy.
    It was a pure joy to watch Cassie in her element, like a child at a petting zoo. She led them from one large bulk to the next. Alex had never before seen so many of the beasts together in the valley. In a single glance he could see that each successive generation had fewer of the humped backs of African elephants. Instead, the younger hybrids’ backs sloped down, the rich cinnamon-colored pelts thickened, and the males’ tusks grew.
    Closer and closer.
    Cassie reached beneath the