Free Mammoth Dawn by Kevin J. Anderson, Gregory Benford Page A

waving signs, shouting “It’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature!” Convinced he is right, Alex doesn’t understand this point of view and refuses to take the “Luddites” seriously.
    [Because this technology is close to culmination, these arguments have already been made in the real world; for example, a recent impassioned editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle condemns the idea of restoring lost species, claiming that extinction is part of the natural process, even if such extinction was caused by man. Cloning or genetic engineering attracts violent protests; death threats have been made against the cloned sheep Dolly, and the recently announced cloned cat is under constant guard.]
    Alex is interrupted by Ralph Duncan, the wiry sixty-ish man in charge of ranch security. Ralph has apprehended an Evo protester who broke through the fences and tried to make it into the back-country security zone. Alex is surprised to see that the man is a former colleague—Geoffrey Kinsman.
    Kinsman worked as a lab assistant years ago when Alex and Helen did their ground-breaking research: decompiling the mammoth genome from Siberian samples. The project yielded a remarkable set of breakthroughs, pioneering the process of reassembling fragments of fossil DNA into a complete genetic chain.
    Alex and Helen properly acknowledged Kinsman’s assistance, but did not include him as a coauthor on their research papers. (Being listed as a coauthor is a very important matter of prestige and survival for up-and-coming scientists.) Though he was little more than a lab assistant, Kinsman felt snubbed, and the wound festered when Alex and Helen later won the Japan Prize for their genome work, a grant of a million dollars. That money became the seed for Helyx Corp, now worth billions—and Kinsman was cut out of all of it.
    Later, Kinsman professed to develop a fundamental moral disagreement over tinkering with the genomes of extinct animals—What sort of effect will these reintroduced animals have on the ecosystem? What if they carry ancient retroviruses? Are the formerly extinct creatures destined to be mere curiosities, strictly to live in museums or zoos? Helen (who is more attuned to feelings than Alex) has never entirely swallowed Kinsman’s rationale; she wonders if their former assistant joined the “clean genes” Evos just because his pride was hurt.
    Because of their connection, Kinsman has come to see Alex face to face, as an ambassador, hoping to “talk some sense” into him. The encounter is initially cordial; Alex jokes, “What are you doing with those clowns? You’re smarter than that!” Kinsman responds, “Can’t you see how restless and angry the people are? You’re pushing too hard, too fast. Those Evo protesters are not crazies, just a symptom of the public’s general uneasiness.”
    Alex tries to win Kinsman over by showing him what Helyx has accomplished. In a scene filled with wonder, Kinsman is astonished to learn that the nesting birds around the outbuildings are actually passenger pigeons , which have been extinct for more than a century. Inside the Pleistocene Hospital, where other animals are kept in pens and cages, Alex shows him hybrid moas (tall ostrich-like birds that were wiped out in the 1700s), ungainly and comical dodos , even a marsupial Tasmanian tiger . Though the work here goes against Kinsman’s moral beliefs, he can’t help but be impressed by the sheer technical accomplishment.
    Impatient yet intrigued, Kinsman asks to see the mammoths . When Alex denies their existence as mere rumors, Kinsman says the big creatures have been spotted on high-resolution satellite photos. Alex can’t understand how a simple protester has access to such images. What sort of friends does Kinsman have?
    Still hoping to change Kinsman’s mind, Alex takes him to a corral where Helen is tending two first-generation mammoth-elephant hybrids. Helen’s work is actually much farther along than this, but neither she