“Aren’t they precious? Stop the car.”
The times of day when most of the Preserve’s visitors were out on game drives was when the lodge and park staff got most of their real work done. Three of them had been escorting a cart across the dirt-covered space between buildings when Ingrid had let out her frantic cry. She was out of the 4×4 and running toward the trio of employees before Whispr could decide whether to follow, get out himself, or drive on. He ended up pulling over and off the main driveway. After parking and securing the vehicle he followed in her wake, albeit with considerably less fervor.
The brace of kittens that the veterinarian and his assistants were transporting in the cart were certainly cute, he had to admit. But then all kittens were cute. It was a highly evolved survival trait denied to most humans. He himself was no stranger to cute. A universally popular meld, it was on ample display everywhere in Greater Savannah. The reclusive, late, and not especially lamented Yabby Wizwang had partaken of it to a large extent himself. As Whispr trailed behind his companion, who was now gushing like a schoolgirl, he had to admit that the pale, mewing, big-eyed kittens were cute even if they sported knives in their upper jaws.
The vet let her pick up one of the month-old sabertooths. Fussing and nuzzling, oblivious to Whispr’s unconcealed unease, she cooed baby talk to the female cub.
“Who’s a cutesy wuzzums, hmm? Who’s a little stuffy-wuffy little furball?”
It yowled and swiped at her with downsized paws and tiny claws that would one day be powerful enough to fell a full-grown auroch with one blow. The camouflaging spots that covered its fur could not detract from the small curved, serrated blades that already thrust downward from its upper jaw. She was careful to avoid them as she petted and tickled and caressed.
This was the woman who hoped to infiltrate SICK’s most secrecy-shrouded research center? This was the person to whose untried deceptive skills he was going to entrust his life? Whispr stood it as long as he could before dragging her away.
“But they’re just so darling,” Dr. Ingrid Seastrom burbled as her peevish companion urged her back toward their parked rental vehicle. She gazed longingly back toward the veterinarian and his trio of precious charges.
Other than being pitched an octave lower, Whispr decided that kittenish meows revived from the Pleistocene sounded little different from those he had encountered numerous times while slinking through the back narrows of Greater Savannah.
“Maybe they’re darling to a dentist.” He waited for the door to open automatically to receive the passenger and made sure she was inside before walking around the front of the 4×4 to resume his own seat. The rental started up smoothly and he sent it cruising at an accelerated pace toward the main gate. “The rest of us need to watch out. I’ve been scratched up pretty good by an ordinary alley cat. I’d hate to think what one of your darlings could do if it put its stuffy-wuffy little killer mind to it.”
Swiveling the passenger seat so that she could glare at him without having to turn her head, she replied coldly, “You just don’t want to have anything to do with anything soft or tender or gentle or loving. Do you, Whispr?”
He didn’t look over at her, concentrating on the route ahead as they approached the first gate. “Excuse the hell out of me, doc, if I’m just focused on staying alive.” Responding to their paid identification the high inner barrier opened to let them out. He pulled forward and waited for it to close behind them. Once it had shut, the outer gate began to slide aside.
“As for the abstract known as ‘loving,’ that particular contrary bitch and I got a divorce a long time ago. If it explains anything, she got my soul in the settlement.”
She pondered his metaphor as they drove past the outer gate and once again found themselves alone in the rocky vastness that was Sanbona. But she didn’t speak to him again for quite a while.
The road quickly became a track, giving her reason to be grateful that her dour companion had shown the foresight back in Cape Town to insist on renting a vehicle that was capable of traveling off-road. A floater would have been even better, of course, but the need to constantly refuel it prohibited the use of such vehicles for private travel. Unlike easily recharged roadsters, scoots, trucks, and buses, floaters ran on hydrogen. Taking in the vast, stony landscape before them and remembering the maps of the region she doubted there was a hydrofuel station to be found anywhere between the principal towns of Worcester and Barrydale. If there was one anywhere in the park it was doubtless reserved for the use of vehicles flown by the Preserve’s rangers.
This would not affect them or their trip. Though they planned to take a roundabout route to their eventual northern destination, in the absence of a proper recharge station they could always top up the 4×4 at a private residence.
Despite her impatience to leave the Preserve behind and resume that journey she made herself relax and enjoy the scenery. Whispr’s adolescent excitement was nothing if not contagious, and she had to admit that seeing so many animals, both resurrected and contemporary, was worth putting aside her obsession with the mysterious thread for at least a day or two.
One thing she didn’t worry about was the safety of that sliver of strange metal which had kindled their journey. As it had ever since they had left Miavana it rode securely in her brassiere. Whispr’s occasional and persistent requests that he be allowed to return it to the secret compartment located in one of his shoes were denied. As day after day passed in the company of her slender companion she had come to trust him more and more—but not to the extent of trusting him with everything. And certainly not with the irreplaceable thread.
They were not alone on the track that followed the river deeper into the Preserve. While it was not the high season at Sanbona it was still a popular destination for both local visitors and those from overseas. Since at this time of year the animals tended to congregate near the water, so did the tourists. There was enough room for everyone and it was far from crowded, but the sense of isolation she and Whispr had first encountered upon entering the Preserve was absent. As they came across other private vehicles and Preserve tour buses she realized how lucky they had been to have encountered the Smilodons and their prey without anyone else around.
Whispr badly wanted to go off-road and get away from other visitors. It was perfectly safe, he reminded her. The GPS apps in their own personal comm units as well as the one in the 4×4 would show their location at all times, and complete track and trail maps were among the data that had been downloaded when they had entered the Preserve. It was impossible for them to get lost, he insisted. His confidence and enthusiasm only partly mitigated Ingrid’s concerns.
“What if we have mechanical trouble?” Gesturing toward the curved windshield she indicated their raw, unpopulated surroundings. “This isn’t Cape Town. It isn’t even Worcester. It’s no place to break down, Whispr. Or have you forgotten about the predators we nearly collided with on our way in?”
“Just the opposite,” he shot back, “I’m looking forward to seeing more of them.” He spoke as if he was chiding an innocent child. “What are you so worried about? We’ve got three comm units; yours, mine, and the one in the rental’s emergency drawer. We run into any trouble and one call brings a ranger in a Preserve floater out to us in five minutes.”
She was gazing out the passenger-side window at the rugged scenery. “One of those sabertooths we saw could kill us in five seconds.”
“Sure it could,” he agreed readily. “All it would have to do is recognize that the car contains actual food, which goes against everything I’ve been reading about big cats, and then make the decision to chew through the composite roof or a door, which I bet would also go against all its predatory instincts.”
The ongoing argument formed a backdrop to sightseeing as they trundled along the track that paralleled the south side of the river. The more distance they put between themselves and the lodge, the fewer tourists they encountered and the less anxious became Ingrid’s protestations.
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The mammoths Whispr hoped to see continued to prove elusive. As Ingrid pointed out when her companion again bemoaned the beasts’ absence, the prevailing temperature at Sanbona was hardly arctic, much less Ice Age.
They did come across half-a-dozen mastodons browsing contentedly alongside their modern African cousins. Three-meter-long piglike Toxodon cropped the soft growths right at the water’s edge, their basso grunts falling halfway between that of swine and hippo. Individual family groups of placid Hipparion grazed in the midst of a zebra herd while a single hulking bull Elasmotherium cropped grass in the shade of the tallest trees, the base of its conical two-meter-long horn covering nearly the entire upper part of its skull.
Except for its size it was almost impossible to tell the formerly extinct Metridiochoerus from the other warthogs that clustered for protection in its impressive shadow. Even more imposing than the mastodons was a herd of Titanotylopus. Nearly four meters tall, the giant camels plucked at leaves too high for any other browser to reach save the occasional giraffe. Formerly extinct antelopes mingled freely with gemsbok, bushbuck, steenbok, hartebeest, and eland.
Neither Ingrid nor Whispr being much of a paleontologist, the names and identifying details of the contemporary as well as resurrected mammals had to be supplied by the park guide app that had been entered into their comm units when they had first entered the Preserve. Activating the add-in and aiming the pickup lens of either device at any animal, plant, or geological formation would cause it to bring up an extensive description of the subject followed by a request for questions. The utterly enthralled Whispr seemed to have an endless supply of the latter.
Good, Ingrid thought to herself each time he excitedly queried his unit. Let him get his fill of the wildlife he came to see. Then maybe he would be able to focus entirely on the business they had come for. As their vehicle wound its way ever deeper into the Preserve she found herself wondering what her friends back home must be thinking. It wasn’t like her to take off on a spur-of-the-moment trip, though if questioned every one of them would have agreed that she certainly deserved the vacation.
Turning the 4×4’s wheel hard to the left Whispr headed off the main track and down a barely visible trail. Pausing in her sustained effort to wreak havoc on the contents of a box of cookies whose chocolate chips melted only when they came in contact with the heat and moisture found in a human mouth, she eyed him sharply.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”
“Away from the river.” His eyes remained focused straight ahead except for the occasional glance at the console readout that showed their constantly shifting position. “Away from people. Away from tourists.”
Her heart beat a little faster. “I thought we were supposed to be trying to convey the impression that we are tourists.”
“You know what I mean. There’s no reason to linger in the vicinity of all these other visitors.”
She used a cookie to gesture back the way they had come. “Maybe they’re all back there, tour buses included, because that’s where the animal action is.”
“Maybe they’re all there,” he countered impatiently, “because people are sheep and follow each other blindly, and the tour buses are there because it’s an easy drive back to camp that won’t damage their precious expensive undercarriages.”
Seeing she wasn’t going to get anywhere with logic she concentrated on enjoying the cookies and said nothing further. The only way he was going to be satisfied was if she let him work out his adolescent fantasies. As long as they were back in camp by dark she supposed it didn’t matter which way they went.
They drove most of the rest of the day without seeing anything but a few birds and small rodents, all of them contemporaneous, when she finally decided the time had come to insist that they start to retrace their route and head for the lodge. He would have complied except that on rounding a hillock composed of smooth granite boulders they chanced upon a herd of glyptodonts. Four meters long from head to macelike tail, the giant relatives of the modern armadillo were peacefully munching their way through a patch of wildflowers that bordered a shallow, shaded pool. As if the presence of the armored herbivores wasn’t enough, Whispr excitedly pointed out a family of big cats that was resting nearby and enjoying the cool in the shade of the rocks.
“Look—more sabertooths!”
Ingrid had her comm unit out and aimed and was studying the readout. “They’re Homotherium, not Smilodon. More properly called scimitar-tooths because the killing canines have a more pronounced backward curve.” Lowering the comm unit she studied the dozing carnivores. “Interesting that the fur of the Smilodons was patterned like leopards but these are tawny and smooth like lions.” She checked her unit again. “The guide says that’s because the sabertooths are ambush hunters and scimitar-tooths are distance runners.”
“There are cubs,” her indulgent companion pointed out teasingly.
That revelation rendered moot any further immediate interest in scientific nomenclature on Ingrid’s part. While the male and female slept, their trio of cubs cavorted in the grass, rolling and wrestling and play-fighting like typical kittens. Bored, two of them charged and challenged a juvenile glyptodont that had strayed slightly away from the rest of the slow-moving herd. It responded by hunkering down and retracting its head into its huge cauldronlike armored shell. Though the spikes at the tip of its clublike tail had yet to fully mature, they were still pronounced enough to break a cub’s leg—or its skull—should one of the juvenile predators come too close.
Taking note of the increasingly dangerous play-hunting the female Homotherium lifted her head, growled warningly, and yawned to expose her huge serrated fangs. The cubs immediately came scrambling back to her.
The two Namericans stayed to watch until a beep from the guide declared even more insistently than Ingrid that it was time to be on their way. Automatically monitoring the time while calculating their position relative to the best available route it was reminding them that they now needed to start back to camp lest they be caught outside the fenced perimeter after sundown. Should they fail to make it back before dark the helpful guide app would automatically issue and record the appropriate heavy fine as well as alerting the park rangers to their prohibited position.
Drawing the interest of local authorities to their altered identities being the last thing Ingrid and Whispr wanted, they hurried to retrace their route. This time it was the doctor who was reluctant to leave. She could have remained parked in one place and watched the Homotherium family all evening. Even while the pride was asleep and motionless she found it hard to pull her gaze away from their exquisitely deadly forms.
“Well,” Whispr murmured as the 4×4 struggled to cope with the difficult, out-of-the-way trail he had chosen, “was it worth the detour away from the river or not?”
She offered a histrionic bow in his direction. “I concede the astuteness of your decision,” she confessed. “I guess I should know by now to trust you when it comes to finding our way around new places. My mistake. I thought your expertise only extended to areas that were urbanized.”
“Getting off the beaten path was only common sense.” Never a believer in false modesty, he readily accepted her compliment. “People like privacy, so do most animals. I figured that if we were going to see anything unique we had to get away from everybody else. Remember, when we ran into the Smilodons there was no one else around.” He went silent for a moment, thinking. “I wonder where they keep the botched resurrections?”
She frowned. “ ‘Botched’?”
“Yeah.” He slowed down as their vehicle struggled to negotiate a steep slope. In the absence of a guide strip running down the center of the roadway the 4×4’s built-in sensors strove to assist the driver by delivering power to the wheels in proportion to their respective position on the ground. “Surely not every one is successful. It’s just like with human melding. Sometimes things don’t turn out the way you expect. Arms and legs, for example. Or faces. I
t’s gotta be the same with these animals.”
She called up memories of the Homotherium cubs and of the sabertooth kits she had played with earlier. Whispr was doubtless right, she knew. Resurrection melding was an incredibly complex enterprise. It was absurd to think there wouldn’t be any failures along the way. She tried to envision the cubs she had seen with distorted bodies and misshapen skulls, with eyes missing or legs twisted and crippled. Those resurrection melds wouldn’t be on show in a place like Sanbona. And restorative, corrective melding was too much trouble and too expensive to bother with when newer, better specimens were always coming online. Instead of being treated, failures and mistakes would be—disposed of.
Definitely it was time for them to be on their way. Banishing the troubling images from her mind she sank deeper into the self-adjusting comfort of the vehicle’s passenger seat.
THAT EVENING SHE ORDERED a second helping from the menu in the lodge cafeteria. The combination of the day’s game drives, the brisk weather, and the excitement of not one but several extraordinary animal encounters had combined to give her an appetite that would have startled her friends back home. Whispr, naturally, was already more than sated by the meager amount of food he had consumed. Her continuing craving in the face of his contentment found her feeling slightly embarrassed. That did not prevent her from reordering, however.
As she waited for the food she had ordered to arrive via the delivery conduit that ran beneath the cafeteria floor and then rose through the gap in the center of the table, she had to listen to him plead for yet one more game drive tomorrow before they left the Preserve behind.
“Haven’t you seen enough animals, both resurrected and contemporary, to last you a lifetime?”
“C’mon, doc.” He smiled encouragingly. “You can’t tell me you haven’t enjoyed this as much as I have.”
“I won’t deny that it’s been an enjoyable as well as necessary diversion.” In the continuing absence of solid food she sipped steadily at her self-chilling glass of Roiboos iced tea. “But we didn’t come here to play tourist. Only to prove to anyone who might be watching that that’s what we are. Now we’ve done that.” Her right hand passed meaningfully over the right side of her chest. Safe within the special compartment in her brassiere was the thread-holding capsule that literally never left her side. “It’s time to move on.”