Mission: Mammoth

By Pamela Love

Whenever a scientist—a certain kind of scientist—“misplaces” something important, I get a call. This time it came to my DC studio apartment at midnight. Instantly awake, I sat up and reached for a light switch. “Give me the details.”

“Yaeger, it’s Mitchell. I need you to find two adult woolly mammoths, hopefully alive. One male, one female.”

I frowned. “Then I’ll need a team and some extra equipment.” Woolly mammoths were by no means the weirdest thing I’d ever been sent after, but they would be the biggest.

“No, these mammoths are only about fifty centimeters long. They’re genetically engineered with a trace of snowshoe hare DNA for reduced size because—”

I raised a hand, though I knew he couldn’t see it. “Don’t tell me unless it affects the job.”

Mitchell sighed. “Anyway, they were lost in Canada, in the Yukon Territory—I can give you their last known location, before their GPS trackers stopped working.”

I swung my legs out of bed. “How long ago?”

“That’s… the tricky part. Approximately ten years.” Those batteries would be long dead, then.

At the thud of my head hitting the pillow—mammoths missing for a decade could wait six more hours—he spluttered, “There was an explosion at the site! I didn’t dream anything could’ve survived, so I put the project on hold. However, now the powers that be insist I move forward immediately because—never mind.”

I rolled my eyes but didn’t press. Almost certainly they’d learned a competitor was working on the same idea.

“Nearly all of my research was lost in the disaster. I require the DNA from at least one mini mammoth, or I’ll have to start from scratch.”

I ran a hand through my thinning hair, mumbling, “Is there any evidence that they’re still alive? Or that any tissue would still be recoverable after this much time? Other than the fact that it would be very convenient for you.”

“No, but there will be a substantial bonus if you can somehow find one alive. Nevertheless, I’ll pay well for anything usable you recover.”

“Yes, you will.” And no doubt I’ll need to earn every bit. Mitchell was a repeat customer, though. He’d earned a speedy start. Dressing rapidly, I grabbed the case holding my cold-weather gear, some of which had been handed down through the family business by an ancestor once hired to retrieve a runaway patched-up corpse a scientist had revived—what a mess that would have been if my many times great-grandfather hadn’t succeeded!

***

This was my second Yukon mission. With clear skies, a light breeze, and only a dusting of snow, conditions were far easier than the Yeti search had been. Of course, they normally inhabit the Himalayas, but the Martians—don’t get me started about the Martians. They still haven’t paid me.

My hovercraft skimmed a meter above the tundra, weaving smoothly among scattered rocks, many roughly the color, size, and shape of a missing mini mammoth. Normally my sensor could’ve easily picked up their DNA, but the added hare DNA confused the input. Which meant I’d have to eyeball it.

Leaving the stony field behind, I slowed my craft. With my latest-model binoculars, I carefully scanned the ground. Nothing.

“Nothing,” in this case, meant no mini mammoths. There was plenty of wildlife, everything from assorted rodents to foxes, a lynx, and an eagle. As the hours passed, I realized that any predator in this near-barren landscape would’ve been too much for Mitchell’s bioengineered creatures. Millennia ago, woolly mammoths’ enormous size protected them from any hunters other than humans. At fifty centimeters, they’d be all but helpless. Hare DNA wouldn’t increase their speed enough to outrace the local predators or turn them into strong enough diggers to escape them. No doubt the pathetic creatures had been long ago absorbed into the food chain, even if they did escape the blast. Hiring me was a waste of Mitchell’s backers’ money.

By now, my legs needed stretching. Parking the hovercraft at the foot of a rocky ridge, I started up on foot. When I was halfway to the top, I heard something behind me. It was a wolf padding upward.

I shouted. It slowed, but didn’t flee. Rabies? It looked scrawny and its black muzzle was graying; maybe it was just desperate.

Cursing myself for leaving my rapid-effect tranquilizer gun in the hovercraft, I extended my combat staff, which I never leave behind. Bellowing and waving the steel bar didn’t discourage the wolf, which kept coming—until it passed me by as if I weren’t there. “What am I, chopped liver?” I grumbled after it, feeling foolish. “And if you’re hungry, why didn’t you go after something down below? Unless whatever’s on the other side of the ridge is even easier to catch…”

I’d learned to listen to my gut on these missions, so I continued my climb. My commlink beeped as I neared the top. “Yaeger.”

“Any luck yet? I suppose it’s too much to ask if you saw even one?”

As I crested the ridge, I caught a glimpse of the plain beyond—including the stalking wolf—and threw back my head, roaring with laughter. “No, I didn’t see one.”

Mitchell sighed. “Well, at least you tried.”

I pumped my fist. “And succeeded!” Or rather, the mini mammoths had, beyond either of our wildest dreams. That hare DNA had provided the mammoths another way to survive. Hundreds, maybe a thousand, of the creatures wandered across the lowland in front of me. Their trumpet calls sounded like a fanfare to life itself.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pamela Love was born in New Jersey and worked as a teacher and in marketing before becoming a writer. Her work has appeared in Havok, Page & Spine, and Luna Station Quarterly. She is the 2020 winner of the Magazine Merit Fiction Award for her story “The Fog Test,” which appeared in Cricket. She and her family live in Maryland.

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