Project Hannibal Kathryn Hoff (best free e book reader TXT) 📖

Minutes before, Di had demanded to get out of the truck. Why was he now so determined to come back?

The answer had to be Pearl.

But Pearl and the others were pregnant—she couldn’t possibly be giving off mating hormones.

Unless . . .

Pearl had been implanted with an engineered mammoth embryo three months ago. But if the implant had failed, she might be coming into mating condition again. She couldn’t be far into estrus, or she would welcome Di’s advances with enthusiasm instead of revulsion.

Damn. Just when Luis needed things to go smooth. Was Diamond’s training strong enough to override his randy instincts?

Still straddling the rail, Luis slipped his tablet from his pocket and keyed a command. A low, deep rumble came from the speaker—the recorded sound of a mother elephant reproving a youngster. “Back, Di. Listen to your mother. Back.”

Di took a step backward.

Luis repeated the recorded call. He slipped off the rail, holding his arms out to make himself bigger. “Move out, Di. Tcha.”

Diamond swayed for a moment, then turned and descended the ramp.

Luis breathed a sigh of relief. As soon as he moved the partition out of the way, Pearl was out and down the ramp, escaping into the brush, Diamond in hopeful pursuit.

“What the hell was that about?” Dirty and disheveled, Brandon emerged from under the truck, brushing off his jeans. The drivers, safe in their cabs, shouted catcalls.

Luis ignored them. “Pearl doesn’t seem to be pregnant anymore. It looks like Diamond will get his chance to breed earlier than expected. Start loading the gear while I get the rest out.”

In the second truck, Opal occupied the stall nearest the door. Since she was already carrying a hundred pounds of developing baby, she got a pass on being harnessed. Before releasing her, Luis passed his hands down her sides. The hard lump deep inside didn’t seem to have shifted toward the birth channel yet.

Luis patted her flank with relief. “All right, Opal, you’re good to go. Tcha.”

In the next stall, Ruby, the herd’s matriarch, swayed and swung her trunk.

“Hey, old girl.” Luis rubbed the side of Ruby’s hairy face.

Parents should love their children equally, but Ruby had been Luis’s favorite since Anjou had first decanted her from the incubation tank.

She raised her trunk-tip to blow a greeting to Luis. He drew from his pocket a small turnip, a special treat he’d saved just for her. “Don’t tell the others,” he whispered. God, he was going to miss her.

Ruby wrapped the tip of her trunk around the treat and deftly tossed it into her mouth.

He placed on her a harness with a pad and stirrups: Ruby would be his mount. When he opened the stall, she padded down the ramp as docile as a two-ton dog.

Ruby’s year-old calf, Jet, was in the third stall. Jet was special: the first calf born from a mammoth womb rather than an incubation vat; the first calf raised on mammoth milk and not formula. Anjou had touted Jet as proof that Project Hannibal could produce a viable mammoth herd, but to Luis, he was as precious as a first grandchild.

Luis fondled the stringy hair on the calf’s head as Jet followed his mother down the ramp. Already five hundred pounds and no longer nursing, he still stayed close to Ruby for protection.

Last, Luis released Turquoise, a spunky four-year-old male. “Time to go to your new home, Turq. Go on, boy. Wide open spaces. A whole world of trees to munch.” In another year, he’d be old enough to provide breeding competition for Diamond.

All now free, the mammoths clumped beside the trucks in an orgy of trunk-twining and trumpeting, lifting their long noses to sniff the new environment. Forced separation for so long was unnatural for animals so closely social as mammoths. Males strayed on the fringes of the herd, often wandering away for days at a time, but even they stayed in touch through scent and the infrasonic vocalizations that could carry for miles through air and ground.

Brandon had unloaded the two backpacks and a heap of made-for-horses saddlebags, already packed with their camping gear and all the supplies they’d need for a month in the wild. He muttered soothingly to Emerald as he strapped baggage onto her harness.

Pearl had escaped Di’s amorous attention once he’d had a chance to sniff her closely. Now she lounged at the edge of the group, consoling herself with mouthfuls of grass.

“Pearl, hey-up,” Luis called. She wandered to him and let him secure the remaining saddlebags to her harness.

Brandon did a double check of the gear and counted mammoths. “Di’s still wandering. Are you going to call him in?”

“A male in musth? I’m not worried. He’ll follow the girls.” Luis checked the tablet: the bull was a few hundred yards north, over a small ridge.

“You all set, then?” one of the drivers asked.

“All set.” Luis approached closer and spoke low. “You know what to do?”

The man nodded. “Back to Fairbanks, no unnecessary stops, no talking about the cargo or where we unloaded. Clean the trucks like it was a cattle run. If anybody asks, it was just a load of supplies going to Deadhorse.”

“Good.” Luis passed cash, supplied by Anjou, to each driver.

“Good luck, buddy.”

As the trucks maneuvered their way out, Brandon put an arm around Luis. “Ready?”

“Ready.” They shared a kiss for luck.

With a grin, Brandon strode to the mammoths. “Topaz, kneel.”

Topaz dropped her hindquarters to a sitting position and lowered her chest to the ground. Putting a foot on her right knee, Brandon swung himself onto her back, perching on her shoulders. Topaz rose with a grunt.

“Ruby, kneel.” As soon as Luis mounted, Ruby rose, hoisting him six feet above the ground. He pressed his toes forward behind Ruby’s ears. “Move out, tcha.”

Hannibal