Mammoth by John Varley Page B

him with anything. In fact, I’m hoping he won’t fire me. I’d be easy enough to replace. Not like you.”
    Matt snorted. “If only Howard knew how little of the special talents he hired me for have come in handy so far. Any competent engineer could have done what I’ve done. In fact, my engineering team has been responsible for what progress we’ve made so far.”
    “Yeah, but that’s all been preparation, right? Step one. Now you’ve got the new machines assembled, you can really get to work…right?”
    “That’s the theory. I only wish I knew what step two is.” He hesitated, but was helpless to stop himself. “You could quit.”
    “I mean to see this through to the end,” she said, raising her voice.
    “Of course you do. I didn’t mean it, I…well, yes, I meant it, but I can see now it wouldn’t work. I mean, you’re dedicated to your work, and all….”
    “Matt, I like you,” she said, and touched him lightly on the cheek. “I wish I could go on seeing you. But understand this. Unless Howard cans me, I intend to be there when that mammoth is born.”
    “How about weekends?” he asked. “I could fly up on weekends.”
    “Sure, you could do that.” She smiled. So maybe it wasn’t the end of the world. His cell phone rang.
    “Yeah?” He listened for a moment. “I’ll be right there.” He hung up, and looked at Susan. “That was Ramón, the night guard,” he said. “There’s been a break-in at the laboratory.”

FROM “LITTLE FUZZY, A CHILD OF THE ICE AGE”
    In little Fuzzy’s world, there were not many creatures that went around on two legs. There were birds. There was the giant ground sloth, which sometimes lumbered around on two legs. And there was a troublesome species that went around on two legs all the time. They looked very much like us. They were humans.
    But who were these people? Were they Indians? Well, they had their own name for themselves, but we don’t know what it was, since they didn’t have a written language. They were the ancestors of the tribes who would later live in the area and call themselves names like Chumash, Gabrieleno, Serrano, Luiseno , and Cahuilla . They had crossed over a land bridge that used to exist during the Ice Ages between the places we would later call Siberia and Alaska. Scientists call this land bridge Beringia .
    What we call these people today is Clovis hunters . They made spearheads, called Clovis points , out of flint and strapped them to long branches to make spears. These spears were very sharp! One Clovis hunter could easily kill a rabbit or a turkey with one. Two or three hunters working together could kill a deer or a camel. (Yes, there were camels in California when Fuzzy lived there!) But it took a lot of the Clovis people to hunt a mammoth…and even then, they had better watch out!
    One day the herd was munching its way through a big field full of tender green grass and a few scattered, twisted oak trees when suddenly the ground collapsed beneath the feet of Big Mama’s younger sister!
    Younger Sister trumpeted her alarm, and the rest of the herd came running!
    At the same time small, almost hairless creatures began dropping from the trees. They had been hiding in the branches, upwind from the trap they had dug and covered with branches and grass, so the herd would not smell them! They wore the skins of dead animals. They walked on their hind legs, like birds. And they were shouting, making an awful racket, and throwing sticks and rocks!
    Fuzzy hurried to Temba’s side and cowered there, barely daring to peek around his mother’s thick, tree-trunk leg. Some of his aunts herded all the younger mammoths around Fuzzy and Temba and then made a wall of mammoth flesh around them. They bellowed at the chattering two-legs!
    Meanwhile, Big Mama and four or five others charged at the two-legs, who quickly turned and scattered and ran away. Big Mama could not chase them all, but she caught one with one of her huge tusks and threw