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Authors: Kevin J. Anderson, Gregory Benford
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the bounty of the mammoth. [NOTE: a compelling and controversial recent theory suggests that overhunting by humans was one of the primary causes for the demise of the woolly mammoth as well as other Ice Age beasts.]
In a terrible scene, the panicked herd rushes headlong over the cliffs. At the bluff edge, the biggest bull mammoth turns to face the hunters. One hunter, pumped up on the fern drug, faces the mammoth with his spear in a suicidal confrontation. The other hunters close in from the sides with their weapons. The bull mammoth rears, the hunters charge … and they all go over the cliff.
Already some tribe members are scrambling down into the swamps to retrieve their prey. There will be much butchering, skinning, preserving. Amidst the carnage, broken mammoths lie in the tar pit swamp. Some are still alive, thrashing and trumpeting their death cries. Hungry sabretooths and dire wolves stalk around the edges of the swamp, ready for the feast. Using torches, the Pleistocene tribe members try to drive them off, to defend their kill. But there is more here than the tribe could ever need.
The elders will tell the story of this day again and again, until great-grandchildren no longer believe it. Even with all the telltale signs, the cold, the disease, the dwindling herds, the Pleistocene hunters do not doubt that the magnificent mammoths will always be there.
Part I—Mammoth Ranch
Modern day Siberia—same location. We meet charismatic Gregor Galaev out at a paleontological site called “Mammoth Falls,” where teams are excavating a huge number of preserved bones and carcasses. Before the end of the chapter, the reader will know Gregor is our villain, a cultured and suave “godfather”-style power broker who has carved out his own empire here in isolated Siberia, a former Soviet Mafia figure who has changed his name and made a new life.
Mammoth Falls is a treasure trove that makes the La Brea Tar Pits seem like an hors d’ouvre . The diggers have already found numerous carcasses of woolly mammoths, sabretooths, dire wolves, Pleistocene horses: an entire prehistoric environment preserved by the asphalt seep, the anoxic marsh, and the Siberian cold. Thanks to new genetic techniques, DNA from these extinct creatures is intact and extractable—enough to make the site enormously profitable.
Though he keeps a low profile, Gregor runs numerous operations—both legal and illegal—between Russia and the US, via Alaska. He is wealthy and ambitious, wanting to be respectable even in America. Gregor has entered into a partnership with a young American visionary and scientist, Alex Pierce (whom we will meet in the next chapter); Alex has amassed a fortune through his genetic patents, and has now turned his resources to studies of extinction and protecting endangered species. Alex is particularly interested in extinct animals from the Pleistocene Age, hence his connection with Gregor and the Mammoth Falls fossil site, from which Alex obtains pristine research specimens.
Running the Mammoth Falls excavation is Gregor’s massive right-hand-man, nicknamed Psyk (Russian for “psycho”), a part-Eskimo, part-Siberian who spent time in Siberian gulags (and has the proud, detailed tattoos to prove it) before he fell in with Gregor Galaev. Psyk clings to a remnant of Eskimo mysticism, takes his life and his work at face value, and is totally loyal to Gregor. He looks like a thug, but is much deeper than that.
At the busy fossil dig, workers fill hoppers with cold, blackish muck, sorting brick-sized mammoth molars into bins, stacking tusks in a pile like firewood. Psyk finds a broken flint spearhead and is oddly stirred by this ancient site, as if he has been born into the wrong time and place. While Gregor is always looking to the future, Psyk is fascinated by the past.
While the two men stand at the base of the bluff, over which hunters once drove mammoth herds, Siberian workers slog around in the tar pit wearing rubber
In a terrible scene, the panicked herd rushes headlong over the cliffs. At the bluff edge, the biggest bull mammoth turns to face the hunters. One hunter, pumped up on the fern drug, faces the mammoth with his spear in a suicidal confrontation. The other hunters close in from the sides with their weapons. The bull mammoth rears, the hunters charge … and they all go over the cliff.
Already some tribe members are scrambling down into the swamps to retrieve their prey. There will be much butchering, skinning, preserving. Amidst the carnage, broken mammoths lie in the tar pit swamp. Some are still alive, thrashing and trumpeting their death cries. Hungry sabretooths and dire wolves stalk around the edges of the swamp, ready for the feast. Using torches, the Pleistocene tribe members try to drive them off, to defend their kill. But there is more here than the tribe could ever need.
The elders will tell the story of this day again and again, until great-grandchildren no longer believe it. Even with all the telltale signs, the cold, the disease, the dwindling herds, the Pleistocene hunters do not doubt that the magnificent mammoths will always be there.
Part I—Mammoth Ranch
Modern day Siberia—same location. We meet charismatic Gregor Galaev out at a paleontological site called “Mammoth Falls,” where teams are excavating a huge number of preserved bones and carcasses. Before the end of the chapter, the reader will know Gregor is our villain, a cultured and suave “godfather”-style power broker who has carved out his own empire here in isolated Siberia, a former Soviet Mafia figure who has changed his name and made a new life.
Mammoth Falls is a treasure trove that makes the La Brea Tar Pits seem like an hors d’ouvre . The diggers have already found numerous carcasses of woolly mammoths, sabretooths, dire wolves, Pleistocene horses: an entire prehistoric environment preserved by the asphalt seep, the anoxic marsh, and the Siberian cold. Thanks to new genetic techniques, DNA from these extinct creatures is intact and extractable—enough to make the site enormously profitable.
Though he keeps a low profile, Gregor runs numerous operations—both legal and illegal—between Russia and the US, via Alaska. He is wealthy and ambitious, wanting to be respectable even in America. Gregor has entered into a partnership with a young American visionary and scientist, Alex Pierce (whom we will meet in the next chapter); Alex has amassed a fortune through his genetic patents, and has now turned his resources to studies of extinction and protecting endangered species. Alex is particularly interested in extinct animals from the Pleistocene Age, hence his connection with Gregor and the Mammoth Falls fossil site, from which Alex obtains pristine research specimens.
Running the Mammoth Falls excavation is Gregor’s massive right-hand-man, nicknamed Psyk (Russian for “psycho”), a part-Eskimo, part-Siberian who spent time in Siberian gulags (and has the proud, detailed tattoos to prove it) before he fell in with Gregor Galaev. Psyk clings to a remnant of Eskimo mysticism, takes his life and his work at face value, and is totally loyal to Gregor. He looks like a thug, but is much deeper than that.
At the busy fossil dig, workers fill hoppers with cold, blackish muck, sorting brick-sized mammoth molars into bins, stacking tusks in a pile like firewood. Psyk finds a broken flint spearhead and is oddly stirred by this ancient site, as if he has been born into the wrong time and place. While Gregor is always looking to the future, Psyk is fascinated by the past.
While the two men stand at the base of the bluff, over which hunters once drove mammoth herds, Siberian workers slog around in the tar pit wearing rubber
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