Mammoth Dawn Read Free Page A

offhanded comment. “Look, I don’t have time to show you everything. It’s obvious you’re more interested in proselytizing than in science.”
    A rotund bird higher than a man’s knee waddled across the floor, looking comical, its black beak blunt and ugly, its eyes innocent. Two stubby wings betrayed the flightless nature of the bird, which moved at a rapid, though ungainly clip. A tufted curlicue of feathers poked up like a pigtail from its rear. The bird prodded around in corners, pecked at imaginary insects, as if it had forgotten where its food dish was.
    This time Kinsman stared. “ Dodos , too?” The dapper man leaned forward and took out his pen, pointing it at Alex as if it were a symphony conductor’s baton. “Where will you stop, Pierce? Do you intend to bring back smallpox as well? Or any number of vermin the world is better off without? Have you no respect for the natural order?”
    Alex picked the ungainly bird up and carried it squawking to a bowl of grain. The dodo immediately forgot its annoyance and began to gobble the corn. “These birds lived quite nicely on the island of Mauritius until European sailors came and killed them for food. That wasn’t so bad, but the sailors also let loose dogs, rats, and hogs, which ate the dodo’s eggs. It took only a century or two for the entire species to be wiped out.” He scratched the feathers on the turkey-sized bird. “What, exactly, is natural about that?”
    Kinsman directed a condescending look at Alex Pierce—who captained a gigantic corporation, who had developed a cure for the digestive misery of billions—as if he were an ill-educated child. “You can’t possibly predict the long-term consequences of your tampering. Forced breeding, gene-selection, wombs implanted with embryos they were never meant to carry. Why must you push things so much?”
    “Because I don’t have time to waste,” Alex said mildly. “Evolution can meander all it likes. We have calendars.”
    Kinsman sniffed, clicked his pen twice in a nervous gesture. “Mankind is part of the natural order, Pierce, the dominant species on Earth, while other species failed along the way.”
    “Sometimes with a little help from us. What’s wrong with rectifying that?”
    Kinsman tossed his pen onto a cluttered desk and actually clasped his hands together in a melodramatic beseeching gesture. “What makes extinction caused by human interference so different from extinction due to, say, a huge asteroid impact? Will you try to bring back dinosaurs next?” He scoffed. “Or woolly mammoths ? I’ve heard what you have back in your valleys.”
    Alex maintained a noncommittal expression. “Rumors.”
    “Satellite photos.”
    Alex didn’t respond, trying to hide his surprise that Kinsman and his protesters could have gotten such high-resolution images from the Feds.
    Kinsman pressed his advantage. “I want to see them, Pierce.”
    O O O
    Blocked from view by a thick stand of Ponderosa pines, the corral had once been used for breaking horses. But Helyx had reinforced the fences, added motion detectors and voltage zappers, and made the barricades much taller. As needed.
    Inside the enclosure, Helen studied two of the first-generation hybrids, giving each one a standard monthly physical exam. Maybe Kinsman would be satisfied with this.
    When she saw her husband pass through the double gate, Helen’s face lit up. They had spoken via earlink after he’d arrived back from Miami, but both of them had been too absorbed with ranch duties to see each other before now. They would have plenty of time tonight, camping out under the stars, back where no one could find them.…
    Helen rang the old notes in him with a little breath, a flash of a smile. He had called those eyes “molasses brown” because when he looked into them he felt stuck and never wanted to look away. High cheekbones, luxuriant brown hair, a delicious set of curves artfully set off in a blue blouse atop trim black jeans.